The Robustness and Vulnerability of Food Production and Social Change: An evaluation of interdisciplinary concepts using archaeological data, models and ethnographic observations

Our session is broadly focused on the production of food, which encompasses the beliefs, practices, technologies and resources that individuals draw upon to obtain food. Systems of food production create feedbacks between humans and ecosystems, which can lead to the coevolution of social norms and practices and the composition of ecosystems, path dependency and rapid social transformations (i.e. regime changes). Our session aims to bring together a geographically and conceptually diverse set of contributions to investigate feedbacks between social systems and ecosystems, with a central focus on how strategies of food production modify such feedback processes. In particular, we seek to critically integrate interdisciplinary concepts like robustness, resilience and vulnerability to investigate the recursive relationships between human food practices, ecosystem dynamics, and social changes documented through the long gaze of the archaeological record. Drawing on archaeological, ethnographic data and/or models, the contributions to this session are focused on: (1) examining the trade-offs between strategies designed to cope with environmental change over the short-term and the ways these strategies influence the resilience and create new vulnerabilities for societies over the long-term; (2) discussions of the data, methodologies, and infrastructure needed for research of such trade-offs in social-ecological systems.