With the immediate challenge of climate change adaptation already upon us, what lessons can we draw from the ways in which smaller-scale societies have managed change in the past? These changes include environmental catastrophes such as sea-level rise and the flooding of the continental shelf, large-scale desertification, major volcanic eruptions and their climatic impacts, and ensuing changes to ecosystems supporting major food sources. To what extent does cultural diversity enlarge the arsenal of effective responses? What traces of human response to these events can we find in historical records, including those of archaeology, linguistics or genetics? How might these lessons inform meaningful future strategies for managing societal responses to both small- and large-scale disruptions?

Past adaptations have often been linked – by societies or by researchers – to clearly-marked moments of environmental, socio-political, cultural and other forms of change. Yet, societies also adapt to ongoing processes of change rather than singular events. Accounts of these processes at different temporal scales and the links between different drivers of change are inevitably complex and demand a profoundly trans-disciplinary and culturally modulated approach. Responses to change are often group-specific but can equally be modelled at regional or global scales, requiring different analytical techniques and careful consideration of how narrative accounts might be generated that minimise biases while maximising potential real-world applications.  

This workshop will bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplines that engage with human and ecological histories, including linguistics, archaeology, genetics, anthropology, biology, and history to explore synergies in method and explanation. Papers by researchers from the ANU’s Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative will be balanced by contributions from other researchers or teams, identified through an open call for papers.

Workshop themes and topics

1. Stories of change

• How is change detected, and how is it communicated in the form of narrative, both by researchers in different disciplines and by communities themselves?

• What are the limitations of past-present-future analogies, and how can these be overcome to create meaningful plans for the future?

2. Markers of change 

• What present imprints are the key traces of change in the past, both for different disciplines and for communities?

• What scales are these markers most visible, and are they detectable across different disciplines? What is defined as change at various scales? How do we recognise when different processes produce similar traits (equifinality), and how can we distinguish between them?

3. Drivers of change 

• What have been the critical external drivers (climatic/physical) of change in the past, and how do they interact with and compound with social drivers (population, technology, social organisation) other’s effects?

• What are the effects of the intervention of states in changes once managed entirely at a local level?

4. Agents of change, adaptation, and the politics of response

• How are decisions made around change, and who gets to make them?

• How far is change conscious and goal-oriented, as opposed to emerging from bodies of less conscious practice which nonetheless achieve adaptive outcomes?

• Not all responses to change are successful. What does failed adaptation look like in the past? How do societies preserve and pass on adaptive – and maladaptive! – knowledge, and how can this be recognised in the past?

Coda: Emergent research goals

A final session reflecting on possible directions for future research and grant opportunities inspired by presentations and discussion at the workshop