Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.
Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2019 Sep 18;14(9):e0221967. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221967. eCollection 2019.
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.
尽管间断平衡模型已被应用于古生物学和考古学研究，但它很少被应用于全新世的技术和社会进化。我们选择阿拉伯谷（约旦/以色列）的冶金技术作为案例研究，证明了在整个地区（面积约 2000 平方公里）同时发生了渐进的技术发展（公元前 13 世纪至 10 世纪），随后是人类活动引发的间断性“飞跃”（公元前 10 世纪末期）。在这里，我们提出了一个无与伦比的、历时性的考古冶金数据集，重点是对数十个经过良好时间测定的炉渣样本进行元素分析。基于这些结果，我们认为间断平衡为探索与更大的社会政治条件（就本案例而言是圣经中的以东）相关的古代技术变化提供了一个创新的理论模型，例证了其在更广泛的跨文化应用中的潜力。
