The Role of Resilience in Socio-Environmental Co-Evolution: the Middle Rhône Valley (France) between 1000 b.c. and a.d. 1000

Jean-François Berger - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France

 

Abstract

This paper reports on part of a research project investigating the spatiotemporal aspects of resilience in complex social systems in north mediterranean region. That project aims to develop a conceptual model of the dynamics that drive the evolution of regional socio-environmental systems by looking at three case studies.
We report here on one of those case studies: the areas of Valdaine and Tricastin (Middle Rhone valley, France) between 1000 b.c. and a.d. 1000 (from the end of Bronze Age to the beginning of the Middle Age). In this regions, we can used a very important and pluridisciplinary database accumulated since 15 years in archaeology and palaeoenvironments (geoarchaeology and palaebotany), mainly by exploiting data of rescue Archaeology.
In very general terms, one could say that the continued existence of socio-environmental systems depends upon the adequacy of the interaction between their societal and their environmental dynamics. This adequacy varies through time with the evolution of both these domains. At certain times, they are impervious or indifferent to perturbations because their internal dynamics are sufficiently coherent and dominant to be able to ignore them. In such a "robust" state, a system necessarily follows its own trajectory. At other times, such socio-environmental systems are so vulnerable that any perturbation, large or small, would cause an irreparable loss of coherence. In such a "window of vulnerability," the system will only survive if, by chance, no perturbations occur. But the intermediate ("resilient") state, in which the socio-environmental system survives by adapting, seems to us the most interesting. We will explore it further in order to better understand the processes and parameters that impact on the sustainability of socio-environmental systems.