Archaeological Evidence for Community Resilience and Sustainability: A Bibliometric and Quantitative Review

Abstract

Archaeology is often argued to provide a unique long-term perspective on humans that can be utilised for effective policy-making, for example, in discussions of resilience and sustainability. However, the specific archaeological evidence for resilient/sustainable systems is rarely explored, with these terms often used simply to describe a community that survived a particular shock. In this study, a set of 74 case studies of papers discussing archaeological evidence for resilience/sustainability are identified and analysed using bibliometric methods. Variables from the papers are also quantified to assess patterns and provide a review of current knowledge. A great variety of scales of analysis, case study locations, stressors, resilient/sustainable characteristics, and archaeological evidence types are present. Climate change was the most cited stressor (n = 40) and strategies relating to natural resources were common across case studies, especially subsistence adaptations (n = 35), other solutions to subsistence deficiencies (n = 23), and water management (n = 23). Resilient/sustainable characteristics were often in direct contrast to one-another, suggesting the combination of factors is more important than each factor taken individually. Further quantification of well-defined variables within a formally-produced framework is required to extract greater value from archaeological case studies of resilience/sustainability.