TY - JOUR
T1 - Ancient technology and punctuated change
T2 - Detecting the emergence of the Edomite Kingdom in the Southern Levant
AU - Ben-Yosef, Erez
AU - Liss, Brady
AU - Yagel, Omri A.
AU - Tirosh, Ofir
AU - Najjar, Mohammad
AU - Levy, Thomas E.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Ben-Yosef et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - While the punctuated equilibrium model has been employed in paleontological and archaeological research, it has rarely been applied for technological and social evolution in the Holocene. Using metallurgical technologies from the Wadi Arabah (Jordan/Israel) as a case study, we demonstrate a gradual technological development (13th-10th c. BCE) followed by a human agency-triggered punctuated “leap” (late-10th c. BCE) simultaneously across the entire region (an area of ~2000 km2). Here, we present an unparalleled, diachronic archaeometallurgical dataset focusing on elemental analysis of dozens of well-dated slag samples. Based on the results, we suggest punctuated equilibrium provides an innovative theoretical model for exploring ancient technological changes in relation to larger sociopolitical conditions—in the case at hand the emergence of biblical Edom–, exemplifying its potential for more general cross-cultural applications.
AB - While the punctuated equilibrium model has been employed in paleontological and archaeological research, it has rarely been applied for technological and social evolution in the Holocene. Using metallurgical technologies from the Wadi Arabah (Jordan/Israel) as a case study, we demonstrate a gradual technological development (13th-10th c. BCE) followed by a human agency-triggered punctuated “leap” (late-10th c. BCE) simultaneously across the entire region (an area of ~2000 km2). Here, we present an unparalleled, diachronic archaeometallurgical dataset focusing on elemental analysis of dozens of well-dated slag samples. Based on the results, we suggest punctuated equilibrium provides an innovative theoretical model for exploring ancient technological changes in relation to larger sociopolitical conditions—in the case at hand the emergence of biblical Edom–, exemplifying its potential for more general cross-cultural applications.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85072284790&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0221967
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0221967
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C2 - 31532811
AN - SCOPUS:85072284790
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 14
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 9
M1 - e0221967
ER -
