Resilience and the Afterlives of Events: Archaeological Theory for Heritage Practice

Resilience is often treated as a property of coherent systems. Drawing on assemblage theory and the concept of the event, this article reinterprets resilience archaeologically as a material effect of relations among people, things, and landscapes. Rather than measuring the stability of pre-given entities, we read resilience in the archaeological record through reconfigurations, continuities, ruptures, and redistributions that leave durable traces. This theoretical move clarifies how “collapse,” reorganization, and emergence appear materially and why not all disturbances become events. We then pivot from theory to practice: heritage is framed as the afterlife of events, an assemblage that stabilizes the aftermath of rupture through conservation, commemoration, and care. Heritage’s endurance is both fragile and generative: it depends on ongoing work while enabling communities to orient themselves amid uncertainty. The article thus positions archaeological theory to illuminate heritage practice, offering a material, relational account of how endurance is made and maintained. We close by outlining the ethical and political limits of “resilience” and proposing a reflexive, assemblage-based approach to heritage as reorganization.