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.