Conceptualising an Anatomy of Transformations: DPSIR, Theorisation, Semiotics and Emergence

Abstract

AbstractTransformation processes that affect past societies can be complex and difficult to understand when observed at larger scales, especially when many factors are involved. Furthermore, researching transformations can often become reductive, with too much focus on only some factors or aspects of past societies, to the detriment of others. This has been the challenge of large-scale socio-environmental projects of recent years, including our own.In order to address this issue, this chapter develops a model of the anatomy of transformations that is built upon four main pillars. The first pillar is DPSIR (Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response). Originally used in ecological studies, DPSIR provides a flexible framework that allows us to recognise how societies and ecosystems affect one another in a dynamic manner. Within the DPSIR framework, a second pillar based on theorization allows us to contextualise human behaviour at different scales, for example, through practice theory or cultural evolutionary theory. The third pillar presupposes that human societies are built on meaning and uses semiotics to help us uncover the semantic dimension of past transformations. Finally, the fourth pillar is emergence, which conceives of transformations as diachronic processes in which ecosystems and societies develop new properties based on their interaction.This anatomy has the aim of assembling different aspects of socio-environmental and archaeological research in order to produce a comprehensive picture of past transformations. At the same time, this overall framework is open-ended, which both makes it possible to adapt it to different chronological and geographical circumstances and allows adopters to add or remove elements as they see fit.