Special Feature: Small-Scale Societies and Environmental Transformations: Coevolutionary Dynamics Resilience of small-scale societies' livelihoods: a framework for studying the transition from food gathering to food production

2. The origins of agriculture and the shift from hunting and gathering to committed agriculture is 3. regarded as one of the major transitions in human history. Archaeologists and anthropologists have 4. invested significant efforts in explaining the origins of agriculture. A period of gathering 5. intensification and experimentation and pursuing a mixed economic strategy seems the most plausible 6. explanation for the transition to agriculture and provides an approach to study a process in which 7. several non-linear processes may have played a role. However, the mechanisms underlying the 8. transition to full agriculture are not completely clear. This is partly due to the nature of the 9. archaeological record, which registers a practice only once it has become clearly established. Thus, 10. points of transitions have limited visibility and the mechanisms involved in the process are 11. difficult to untangle. The complexity of such transitions also implies that shifts can be 12. distinctively different in particular environments and under varying historical and social 13. conditions. In this paper we discuss some of the elements involved in the transition to food 14. production within the framework of resilience theory. We propose a theoretical conceptual model in 15. which the resilience of livelihood strategies lies at the intersection of three spheres: the 16. environmental, economical and social domains. Transitions occur when the rate of change, in one or 17. more of these domains, is so elevated or its magnitude so large that the livelihood system is unable 18. to 'bounce back' to its original state. In this situation, the system moves to an alternative stable Ecology and Society ES-2016-8757 (Version 3 of ES-2015-8058) 2 19. state (from one livelihood strategy to another). 20.