Spice up your life: Adding emotions to the prehistoric resilience menu
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Archaeological studies on societal resilience are mainly oriented toward broad
economically-oriented changes within a culture and often involve the Adaptive
Cycle Model. Somehow, we forget that people are the ones who adapt to stressful
situations or crises, not only in physical and material but also mental domains.
While emotional resilience is currently recognised as a critical ability for individual
and collective positive adjustment in the face of adversity, it is surprising that
research on past societies little (or ever) refers to it.
Having that in mind, I introduce two approaches to reveal prehistoric adaptive
emotions in turbulent times for the present discussion.
1) The Final Pleistocene /Early Holocene food stress. Food shortages are probably
the most mentioned crises in prehistory, provoked by environmental instability
and/or demographic change. Hunter-gatherers responded to them differently:
changing subsistence procurement practice to the intensification of fe...w resources
and exploiting a broad spectrum of resources, storing food and other items, an
allocation - migration to neighbouring allies not affected by famine, and even
cannibalism. We compare basic emotions recognised worldwide, possibly revealed
by or related to ancient behavioural adaptations, and discuss their role in prefered
choices.
2) The encounter with the Other in Neolithization. The idea is to consider the
behaviour of the Mesolithic indigenous population as a consequence of the
emotional reaction to Neolithic newcomers and novelties. We treat the encounter
with the Unknown and the Other as affecting the reference framework of local
communities. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers should readapt emotional and other
cultural subsystems according to the apperception of external stimuli, whether
'threatening' or 'affirmative' and further on changeable or unchangeable, avoidable
or inevitable. The relevant resulting feelings are a) anger, b) fear, c) sadness and d)
pleasure accompanied by reactions such as a) an attack on strangers, b) withdrawal
Spice up your life: c) passivity or d) approaching them. Those behaviours could be read in
archaeological material as a) conflicts between communities with traces of
violence, b) abandonment of the Mesolithic sites, c) continuation of Mesolithic
regional culture without adopting (much of) the Neolithic elements and d) fast
regional fusion of Mesolithic and Neolithic features.
The research on suggested methods is still ongoing yet hopefully contributing to
the resilience debate.
,
Keywords:
Mesolithic / emotions / neolithisation / hunter-gatherersSource:
Resilient Communities Workshop: WHAT KEEPS US GOING? - Book of Abstracts, 2022, 11-12Publisher:
- University College Dublin, Irish Research Council
Note:
- Resilient communities workshop, Dublin, Friday, 3 June 2022
Institution/Community
Arheologija / ArchaeologyTY - CONF AU - Mitrović, Milica PY - 2022 UR - http://reff.f.bg.ac.rs/handle/123456789/6182 AB - Archaeological studies on societal resilience are mainly oriented toward broad economically-oriented changes within a culture and often involve the Adaptive Cycle Model. Somehow, we forget that people are the ones who adapt to stressful situations or crises, not only in physical and material but also mental domains. While emotional resilience is currently recognised as a critical ability for individual and collective positive adjustment in the face of adversity, it is surprising that research on past societies little (or ever) refers to it. Having that in mind, I introduce two approaches to reveal prehistoric adaptive emotions in turbulent times for the present discussion. 1) The Final Pleistocene /Early Holocene food stress. Food shortages are probably the most mentioned crises in prehistory, provoked by environmental instability and/or demographic change. Hunter-gatherers responded to them differently: changing subsistence procurement practice to the intensification of few resources and exploiting a broad spectrum of resources, storing food and other items, an allocation - migration to neighbouring allies not affected by famine, and even cannibalism. We compare basic emotions recognised worldwide, possibly revealed by or related to ancient behavioural adaptations, and discuss their role in prefered choices. 2) The encounter with the Other in Neolithization. The idea is to consider the behaviour of the Mesolithic indigenous population as a consequence of the emotional reaction to Neolithic newcomers and novelties. We treat the encounter with the Unknown and the Other as affecting the reference framework of local communities. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers should readapt emotional and other cultural subsystems according to the apperception of external stimuli, whether 'threatening' or 'affirmative' and further on changeable or unchangeable, avoidable or inevitable. The relevant resulting feelings are a) anger, b) fear, c) sadness and d) pleasure accompanied by reactions such as a) an attack on strangers, b) withdrawal Spice up your life: c) passivity or d) approaching them. Those behaviours could be read in archaeological material as a) conflicts between communities with traces of violence, b) abandonment of the Mesolithic sites, c) continuation of Mesolithic regional culture without adopting (much of) the Neolithic elements and d) fast regional fusion of Mesolithic and Neolithic features. The research on suggested methods is still ongoing yet hopefully contributing to the resilience debate. , PB - University College Dublin, Irish Research Council C3 - Resilient Communities Workshop: WHAT KEEPS US GOING? - Book of Abstracts T1 - Spice up your life: Adding emotions to the prehistoric resilience menu EP - 12 SP - 11 UR - https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_6182 ER -
@conference{ author = "Mitrović, Milica", year = "2022", abstract = "Archaeological studies on societal resilience are mainly oriented toward broad economically-oriented changes within a culture and often involve the Adaptive Cycle Model. Somehow, we forget that people are the ones who adapt to stressful situations or crises, not only in physical and material but also mental domains. While emotional resilience is currently recognised as a critical ability for individual and collective positive adjustment in the face of adversity, it is surprising that research on past societies little (or ever) refers to it. Having that in mind, I introduce two approaches to reveal prehistoric adaptive emotions in turbulent times for the present discussion. 1) The Final Pleistocene /Early Holocene food stress. Food shortages are probably the most mentioned crises in prehistory, provoked by environmental instability and/or demographic change. Hunter-gatherers responded to them differently: changing subsistence procurement practice to the intensification of few resources and exploiting a broad spectrum of resources, storing food and other items, an allocation - migration to neighbouring allies not affected by famine, and even cannibalism. We compare basic emotions recognised worldwide, possibly revealed by or related to ancient behavioural adaptations, and discuss their role in prefered choices. 2) The encounter with the Other in Neolithization. The idea is to consider the behaviour of the Mesolithic indigenous population as a consequence of the emotional reaction to Neolithic newcomers and novelties. We treat the encounter with the Unknown and the Other as affecting the reference framework of local communities. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers should readapt emotional and other cultural subsystems according to the apperception of external stimuli, whether 'threatening' or 'affirmative' and further on changeable or unchangeable, avoidable or inevitable. The relevant resulting feelings are a) anger, b) fear, c) sadness and d) pleasure accompanied by reactions such as a) an attack on strangers, b) withdrawal Spice up your life: c) passivity or d) approaching them. Those behaviours could be read in archaeological material as a) conflicts between communities with traces of violence, b) abandonment of the Mesolithic sites, c) continuation of Mesolithic regional culture without adopting (much of) the Neolithic elements and d) fast regional fusion of Mesolithic and Neolithic features. The research on suggested methods is still ongoing yet hopefully contributing to the resilience debate. ,", publisher = "University College Dublin, Irish Research Council", journal = "Resilient Communities Workshop: WHAT KEEPS US GOING? - Book of Abstracts", title = "Spice up your life: Adding emotions to the prehistoric resilience menu", pages = "12-11", url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_6182" }
Mitrović, M.. (2022). Spice up your life: Adding emotions to the prehistoric resilience menu. in Resilient Communities Workshop: WHAT KEEPS US GOING? - Book of Abstracts University College Dublin, Irish Research Council., 11-12. https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_6182
Mitrović M. Spice up your life: Adding emotions to the prehistoric resilience menu. in Resilient Communities Workshop: WHAT KEEPS US GOING? - Book of Abstracts. 2022;:11-12. https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_6182 .
Mitrović, Milica, "Spice up your life: Adding emotions to the prehistoric resilience menu" in Resilient Communities Workshop: WHAT KEEPS US GOING? - Book of Abstracts (2022):11-12, https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_6182 .