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On Ancient Artifacts I: Their Nonlinear Dynamic Paths in Space-Time

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 On Ancient Artifacts I:
Their Nonlinear Dynamic Paths in Space-Time
Dimitrios S. Dendrinos
Professor Emeritus, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, US
In residence, at Ormond Beach, Florida, US
Contact: [email protected]
January 31, 2018

The Antikythera mechanism, an artifact of unknown maker and exact date. It was
found at the seabed, off the coast of the island of Antikythera, at the location of
a shipwreck that occurred circa 70 – 60 BC. The exact origin as well as destination
of that trip is unknown. Source of photo: ref. [3.1].

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 Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction to the Two-Paper Sequence and the Framework
Evolutionary Principles and the Motion of Artifacts in Space-Time
Space-Time Units: Archeological Time, Horizon, and Landscape

Artifacts: their Complex Life Cycles

The Background: Economics and the Spatial Sciences
Introductory Comments
The Production, Making or Assembly, of Economic Products
The Consumption, or Use, of Economic Products
The Distribution and Flows in Space-Time of Economic Products
Spatial Interaction: Statics and Dynamics

A Brief Survey of the Literature in Archeology

The Nonlinear Mathematics of Ancient Artifacts’ Paths in Space-Time

Introductory Comments
Evolution in the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic
Setting up the Theoretical Model

Conclusions
References
Acknowledgments
Notice on Legal Copyrights

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 Abstract
This is the first of a two-paper sequence. It presents the introduction to a general theory of
ancient artifacts, their making, sequence of multiple ownership, and their complex motion in
space-time. In broad strokes, the background to this general theory is presented here, whereas
the formal theoretical mathematical model is put forward in the second paper, see ref. [1.7].
Formulating such a general mathematical model, and upon calibration employing the required
data sets, could assist in better gauging the origin, making and travel patterns of ancient artifacts,
already found or to be discovered by future archeological excavations. Further, the model could
potentially enable the analyst to better derive a historiography of the archeological structures
associated with these artifacts.

Introduction to the Two-Paper Sequence and the Framework

Evolutionary Principles in the Motion of Artifacts in Space-Time
Movement of artifacts follow the movement of their carriers, the flow of people in space-time.
The complex motion of artifacts and population stocks fall within the scope of this paper, the first
part of a two-paper series on the subject of ancient artifacts. How are artifacts and population
stocks accumulating at various points in space-time, and how they flow among these points is
presented within a general theoretical framework that aims primarily at deriving the evolutionary
principles governing the movement of ancient artifacts. Seven evolutionary principles are
discussed. Within this framework, the concomitant spatial motion of various population stocks is
a sine qua non, hence also addressed under the general theory and the model put forward.
It should be noted at the outset, that this general theory doesn’t intend to address any individual
artifacts’ making and life cycle. Neither does it aim at addressing any particular culture’s
appearance and disappearance within the time and space frame considered in this study. Instead,
an abstract general theory of artifacts and population stocks accumulation and flows is to be set
up and analyzed. The study’s ultimate purpose is to offer the mathematical matrix within which
individual and particular artifacts and cultures’ evolutionary dynamics can be perceived and
modeled.

To that effect, peoples from various cultures and some of their artifacts are viewed, over an
extended time period spanning about ten millennia in setting the general framework. With the
artifacts being at the center of the analysis in this paper, specifically, broad evolutionary
processes embedded in cultural artifacts’ life cycle and historiography are examined. Artifacts’
mobility is a topic of special interest in the dating of immobile structures and their associated
historiography, when such dating is pegged to the dating of artifacts found around or within
them. Here, hence, a general framework is laid out as the background within which movement
of artifacts in space-time can be approached and mathematically (analytically and through
computer simulations) modeled, which is the main topic of the second paper in the sequence.

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In this broad theoretical framework, the making (economic production) of mobile ancient
artifacts, their uniqueness, their sequential movement in space-time, and their retirement
processes are examined and analyzed. Hence in this paper, the main problem to be addressed is
stated and a framework is adopted on how one could address ancient artifacts’ motion in space-
time over a grid of space-time units. This framework is in turn translated into a theoretical model,
an extension of a nonlinear discrete dynamics map (see reference [1.6]), developed by this author
in cooperation with Michel Sonis. It is presented in the associated paper, see reference [1.7]. The
Universal map of stock accumulation and flow dynamics focuses on relative allocations of stocks
in space, and not on absolute growth/decline patterns. Such absolute stock dynamics fall usually
under the purview of Malthusian exponential growth/decline models. Empirical evidence and
calibration (verification) of the model suggested must be the topic of a third paper.
It is recognized that mobile archeological artifacts were unique specimens, lasted (in whole or in
part) over prolonged time periods, what will be referred to as “archeological time”, having been
made (produced) and having changed hands possibly multiple times and under different and
varying circumstances, in what (in modern Economics parlance) can be thought of as “highly
imperfect markets”. Artifacts, being mobile items, followed the space-time movement of their
various owners, in the short and the long haul. They were also part of (thin or thick) commodity
flows in the form of what can currently be characterized as formal or informal (as gifts) trade.
Some Economics based principles and fundamental notions are discussed in this paper, in setting
the stage for deriving the evolutionary principles governing ancient artifacts’ life cycles.
In specific, the fact that these items operated under a regime of multiple and successive
ownerships over their life span, from the moment and point of their making to their final resting
place and time is specifically the focus of this work. Moreover, the proposition is put forward that
such a space-time motion directly impacted on and is connected to the identification of complex
human cultural patches, as they formed in space-time. Examples of certain cultural patches are
shown in this paper, to be used as indicators for setting up the background to the mathematical
model. It is concluded that, the proper way to analyze movement of artifacts in a spatial and
temporal context is by adopting a complex nonlinear evolutionary perspective which must be
consistent with the formation and dissolution of cultural patches in space-time. Hence, one must
approach artifacts as made under unique conditions, and having undergone a chain trip motion.
Their historiography involves a sequence of events expanding possibly over millennia long time
frames, called in this paper “archeological time constants”.
This new perspective requires not only a partial re-writing of the relevant Economic and Spatial
Theories in the production and distribution of ancient artifacts, but also a re-assessment, re-
evaluation and re-examination of all those cases where the historiography of fixed structures was
pegged to that of mobile items found in or around them. Furthermore, this two-paper sequence
can be thought of as an effort to pave the way towards setting up the infrastructure for analyzing
any specific artifact or cultural patch in their evolution and motions in space-time.

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 Space-Time Units: Archeological Time, Horizon, and Landscape
As they move over space-time, artifacts obey all principles governing the spatial and temporal
movement of people, extensively examined within a theoretical (analytical, mathematical)
framework in the fields of Spatial Geography and Spatial Economics. This approach to inter-
temporal and inter-spatial flows of population stocks is carried out in aggregate, meaning in a
statistical mean (average) representation of a group’s overall behavior. Data are extremely
difficult to obtain and often simply not available (or possible to legally and ethically obtain,
problems familiar to those involved in transport related surveys) at an individual level.

Historiographical recording of an individual mobile ancient artifact’s motion in space-time entails

a unique chain of trips, as does the spatial and temporal trip making behavior of an individual.
From its origin and making (or assembly) at a specific point in space-time, to its final resting place
(possibly buried in whole or in parts, such is the case with many pottery sherds), where and when
it (they) was (were) unearthed by the archeologists’ pick-axe, an artifact traces a complex path
in space-time. Proper identification of a site’s artifacts and their provenance and historiography
are critical and important elements necessary in identifying the site’s own historiography. In
contrast to the in situ immobile artifacts, such as architectonic structures, mobile ancient
artifacts’ provenance and historiography are far more complex, and thus less certain or possible
to precisely identify and record.

Hence, sole reliance on mobile artifacts to derive firm conclusions on immobile structures’
Archeology is at least problematic. Towards an effort to ease such problems to some extent, here,
an effort is undertaken to provide a general framework and a theoretical mathematical model of
mobile ancient artifacts’ paths in space-time, crossing a grid of spatial-temporal units. To that
end, a new physical space-time unit of measurement is adopted, based on a Gall-Peters
projection map from Physical Geography. This grid of physical spatial-temporal units (STUs) can
be employed to define socio-cultural patches formed at various points in space-time in the Spatial
and Temporal context of this analysis. The work here proposes two novel notions, that of
archeological time and horizons, as well as archeological space defined as the archeological
landscape of interacting cultures.

The archeological time (the dt, of the dynamical model) is a temporal step involving two
centuries, and archeological horizon is a ten millennia long time frame (hence involving 50 steps).
The archeological landscape extends over Western Eurasia and Northern (specifically, North-
East) Africa; whereas the archeological horizon falls between two boundaries, the Upper
Paleolithic with the Epipaleolithic Boundary down to the Neolithic with the Bronze Age boundary.
In setting up the background to the theoretical model (presented in ref. [1.7]) the analysis here
draws from a variety of fields, including Economics, the Spatial Sciences and Human Geography,
Genetics, Evolutionary Biology and Mathematical Ecology, and finally Physics (besides of course
Archeology). Inputs form all these fields are employed in setting up the infrastructure of a
theoretical mathematical model. The reason why these specific archeological times, horizon and
landscape were chosen is because that’s where this analysis becomes mostly of import.
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The study examines in theory three different spaces: the physical space of the Western Eurasia
and Northern Africa Region; the mathematical model’s parameter space and its dimensions
(number of parameters involved) and their values in that space; and finally, the mathematical
model’s phase space, which contains the dynamical behavior of the state variables (populations
and artifacts’ stock accumulations and their flows). In all three of these types of spaces, time is
involved as an extra dimension. The reader must keep these three types of spaces in mind while
reading the two papers, this one as well as the sequel in ref. [1.7].
Although empirical verification of the model suggested is paramount, the emphasis here is on
the buildup blocks of the theoretical mathematical context, that of reference [1.7]. In this
framework, the difficulty (or, as it could potentially be argued, even impossibility) of empirically
verifying the theoretical model proposed is addressed head on in the sequel to this paper, ref.
[1.7]. There, some statistical issues of interest are explored in some mathematical detail, and the
manner in which these difficulties can be partly overcome is explored. An explicit effort is made
to minimize the number of the model’s parameters, thus minimizing the model’s statistical
difficulties. The roots of the formalism into the Spatial Sciences are exposed. The formalism
employed utilizes their fundamental components, which involve spatial and temporal transport
costs, and it pegs migration and trade flows to them, revealing their nonlinear dynamic structure.
Along with these components, principles governing Maximum Entropy and related Gravity
Models from Human and Spatial Geography, and Maximum Utility Theory from Neoclassical
Economics are briefly discussed here and the manner they are employed in the ensuing
formalism are presented. All these notions set the stage for outlining the formal mathematical
model in the sequel to this paper, see ref. [1.7]. That formalism contains aggregate aspects to it,
when utilized as distributing relative shares of a total stock count (that total count being
exogenous to the model) among locations. But it also contains within it a disaggregate
component, since its outcomes could be interpreted as offering a probability count for any
individual population group or artifact’s likelihood of motion in space-time. Suggestions for
further research are also made in the sequel paper (ref. [1.7]), on how to elaborate on the
composition of the space-time units, the archeological time segments, archeological horizon’s
length, and archeological landscape’s extent, along with modification and extension of the author
and M. Sonis’ work in ref. [1.6].

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 Artifacts: their Complex Life Cycles
An enduring question, difficulty and concern in terrestrial as well as underwater (maritime)
Archeology has been the proper identification of artifacts’ provenance, once located in the
ground through dry land excavation or underwater exploration of the seabed. Being mobile
items, as opposed to immobile architectonic structures, their exact provenance and histories -
including their precise location made, their maker(s), their travel path(s) in space-time till their
final resting place where found, and their possible morphological transformations – have been
and continue to be subject for debate and often controversy in the case of almost all ancient
artifacts. It is rarely the case when and where precise provenance of an artifact, be that a lithic
implement from the Upper Paleolithic or a pottery sherd of any period past the Pre-pottery
Neolithic periods A and B (PPNA/B), can be claimed with any degree of certitude. The preamble
photo of this paper, the Antikythera mechanism, is a stellar example highlighting this question.
Although the artifact and its maritime course fall outside the temporal domain of this paper, the
message along those lines it conveys is revealing and relevant to this paper’s concerns.
Usually, attribution of an archeological artifact to a cultural group in space-time is customarily
assigned on the basis of the artifact bearing some similarities to an archetypal, representative
“model structure”, set and considered as somehow (fully or partly) descriptive and
representative of that group’s key attributes. However, and setting aside for the moment critical
aspect of taxonomy in identifying groups (and thus disaggregating artifacts on the basis of some
critical attributes linked to a taxonomic breakdown) such attributions are subjective and
qualitative, often controversial and disputed, since they leave much to interpretation and in a
final analysis they are based on some arbitrary judgement. Artifacts are classified as belonging to
“schools”, “cultures”, “types” or “categories” of specimens while these classifications are usually
and universally considered fuzzy in their definition, as well as in both their spatial and temporal
extents and durations. Artifacts and their classifications seem to obey what in this study will be
referred to as “archeological time”. Economics of unique ancient artifacts’ production are set
here as well, to an extent drawing from existing Economics literature, but extending that
literature to account for the special conditions governing ancient artifacts’ making, life cycles and
retirement. It is generally admissible to argue that likely individual archeological artifacts have
travelled in space-time, during their life span, and flowed among various locations in phases.
Hardly any archeological artifact is location-fixed over its entire life span, from initial production
to final disposal. Of course, this spatial/temporal phasing and distances are also a function of the
scale (size, weight) of the artifact, an issue to be explored here further. This is a trivial statement,
an a priori self-evident, one might categorize it as a logical “primitive”. One need only reflect on
the artifacts carried by a person and his/her household today, to verify the exactness of this
statement, in general. Given this realization, how to record the specific space-time travel path of
any artifact, modern or ancient, presents significant challenges. Whether such a task is even
feasible to precisely re-produce or possible to in full over time and at such detail simulate, that
is to somehow derive the sequence of phase transitions involved in an artifact’s life span, is a

7
question of interest, with widespread implications of a profound Epistemological nature. The
provenance of any atom from any chemical element in a human’s body on Earth today may test
our capability to fully trace, as such chemical elements may had originated in Cosmologically far
away distances and time periods, as well as in Geological Times.
The issue of tracing a unique artifact’s life cycle path in space, in its multiple ownerships and trips
it underwent, is not of course a matter of idle speculation and reflection. Schools of Art and
archeological theories about the dating of sites, and their historiographies very often are pegged
to the identification of artifacts located at these sites and their provenance. Hence, the certitude
with which artifacts are properly dated, their life span spatial trajectories, and their provenance
properly traced when found at a site critically determines (and potentially it could undermine)
the certitude with which an analyst can debate the historiography of the site itself.
Having presented that caveat, which states the inherent difficulty in, and thus raises questions
regarding the extent to which a hypothesized mobile artifacts’ provenance and historiography
can be useful in deriving an immobile structure’s (a site’s) historiography, one can offer
nonetheless some broad, probabilistic (statistical) statements on a collection of artifacts, or a set
of related items. Although specifics on a particular artifact’s individual path in space-time can’t
be extracted from those statistical statements, a General Statistical Theory of Nonlinear in space-
time paths and phase transitions can be derived and formulated, in which some cannons can be
stated, in an axiomatic fashion. Recognizing that the spatial and temporal mobility of non-fixed
in situ artifacts follow the mobility of persons that possess them over different points in time, the
spatial and temporal dynamic model of mobile artifacts’ motion (paths) can potentially draw
from the existing literature on Economics and the Spatial Sciences. However, since these fields
are not exactly geared towards addressing the specifics of artifacts’ mobility in space-time, an
effort must be undertaken to derive some branch of these fields that would.
The purpose of this paper therefore is precisely to do that. It aims at first, bring the discussion on
archeological mobile artifacts within the context of the Spatial Dynamics part of the Human and
Economic Geography literature; and second, to state such an axiomatic spatial-temporal dynamic
theory, and present some cannons that follow this axiomatic presentation. Key in this theory is
the notion of Entropy and its maximization, from both the Mathematical Information Theory, and
Physics, especially Thermodynamics. Along with it, some central notions are used from the
Spatial Sciences, including Transportation Economics, Location Theory, Spatial Geographical
Analysis, and Spatial Geography, where notions of spatially linked Newtonian Gravity-based
spatial interaction models are explored. Expanding these static Spatial Interaction models in an
effort to accommodate short and long-term dynamics brings into the analysis the Mathematics
of Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Theory.

In effect, this is a paper to set the fundamentals of a General Theory of Artifacts Mobility in Space-
Time, and the background Evolutionary context for their spatiotemporal mobility and the
embedded phase transitions in their complex motions over spatial and temporal extents. The
field is very broad and complex, as well as mathematically sophisticated. Obviously, a single paper
8
is not enough to cover the entire field, and much more is expected to follow by interested
scholars in all the aforementioned fields. In a sequel to this paper, the formal Mathematics of the
theoretical model suggested is presented, see ref. [1.7]. Here, the broader framework is laid out.
The reader should not expect to encounter hereon any grandiose (and largely vacuous) notions
such as “pre-capitalist”, “capitalist”, “marxist” and similar sociological or otherwise broad
labeling concepts such as “substantive” vs “procedural” to just cite two from the fields of Law
and Planning. What the reader should expect is some moderately rigorous analytical treatment
of a rather complex subject expressed in abstract terms. Emphasis will be on the analysis of the
general (not specific) cultural issues to be addressed, and certainly not on their specific
sociological or demographic foundations. A conscious effort is made in general to avoid “isms”,
be them sociological, economic or epistemological. Their underlying definitional weaknesses far
outweigh, in this author’s view, the meager substantive insights they offer.
Theoretical aspects of conventional Economic, Sociological, Demographic, Geographic and
Political Science paradigms available at present and mostly addressing current issues of modern
day societies do only and then partially deal with marginal elements of ancient economies. And
the manner in which these elements are put together into a theoretical (coherent or not)
construct called “capitalist” or “marxist” or “pre-capitalist” or any other ideological label one
wishes to endow these theories with, is certainly not only inadequate to describe and explain in
theory Epipaleolithic and Neolithic dynamic economic, demographic, geographic, political and
social behavior but, to a very large extent, irrelevant, for reasons that will be explained in this
paper at length. A key reason among them that renders these theoretical frameworks rather
irrelevant is that they fail to address aspects of Evolution and disequilibrium. Furthermore, these
theoretical frameworks do not and in fact can’t incorporate into their analysis spatial-temporal
units for the recording and measurement of central attributes of the artifacts and their carriers
at the scale needed. As a result, the inherent poverty in the intellectual content of these notions
and of those who use them in their inadequate theories about the Neolithic, is often inversely
proportional to their idiosyncratic attempts to superfluously impress. In this study, although the
complex gamut of interactions between economic, demographic, geographic, social, political and
overall cultural forces will be only touched upon, mainly Economics, and Geography (with
sporadic reference to Demography) will act as the foundation of the theoretical analysis that
follows. A fair amount of exposition is devoted to the derivation of the physical spatial-temporal
unit of analysis, or the STUs which is at the core of the theoretical analysis which follows. How
are these physical space units and their grid derived, based on the Physical Geography, map
making literature involving either Mercator or Gall-Peters projections, is a subject the paper
devotes some space to, as is the placement of the grid onto the Earth’s part of the surface under
study, as well as its temporal length. Sensitivity of the model proposed in ref. [1.7], while
estimating the value of its parameters through calibration, can be tested by various placements
of such a grid and its specific modular dimensions. The paper ends with an introduction to the
main components and processes underlying the formal dynamical mathematical model put
forward in reference [1.7], a paper that must be read in conjunction with this paper.
9
 The Background: Economics and the Spatial Sciences

Introductory Comments

In this very brief survey of the available literature, which is very extensive and varied in substance,
the background’s key features are outlined. The survey contains some classical works of the late
19th and 20th century Economics and Spatial Sciences, constituting in toto a very extensive body
of work, encompassing some foundational ideas that set the stage for and frame the outlining of
a theoretical perspective into the production and distribution of archeological artifacts. Artifacts
were and are the outcome of an economic production process, however primitive or advanced
by today’s standards. The theoretical perspective offered by conventional and contemporary
Economics is of course geared towards mass production, being the product itself of the post-
industrial revolution era. However, as all scientific outcomes, it evolved into a private and public
sectors’ instrument, hence affecting the very production process it intended to model in
numerous and significant ways – a subject certainly of Epistemological interest, but not the focus
of the present paper.
But what is of extreme interest here is that this broad theoretical perspective, which is at times
referred to as “Neoclassical Economics”, is grossly inadequate in addressing topics that define
the relatively very durable life cycle of ancient artifacts (that have survived to this day), and
particularly their longevity and evolutionary processes they have undergone in their rich
historiography. The very static, (what is referred to as) “long-run” (albeit extremely limited in real
temporal extent, given the archeological time constants this paper is attempting to deal with),
unique, competitive, market driven, equilibrium seeking nature of the basic model of Neoclassical
Economics, where almost perfect markets (with the exception where restrictive monopoly and
monopsony, or oligopoly and oligopsony conditions apply) with an exclusive reliance on market
based pricing schemes to allocate scare resources, renders this paradigm inadequate to reflect
on, theorize, simulate and model the basic properties of ancient artifacts: their uniqueness; the
highly imperfect largely informal market conditions they were made under, traded in, changed
owners, acquired value, and were retired; and of course, their very long term durability and at
times extraordinary longevity. The chain of events associated with each one of these ancient
artifacts, likely involved a regime of successive and multiple ownerships, as well as a sequence
and succession of linked trips from their moment and place of production, to their burial and final
resting place at the time of their disappearance from live social activity and use/usefulness.
These sequences identify multiple events associated with the life span of an ancient artifact that
lasted possibly numerous millennia in the artifact’s life span. It must be underlined that of course
not all ancient artifacts survived to this day. What is the proportion of all artifacts in active life at
a given time that survived to this day, and thus can be counted and analyzed, to the total stock
of artifacts at a given time period is unknown, although statistical tests (or hypotheses) can be
formulated on that stock accumulation process. All these aspects of an artifact’s historiography

10
can’t be adequately dealt with by employing the Neoclassical Economics and the Neoclassical
Economics based Spatial Sciences frameworks. A new theoretical perspective is needed, in which
the individual artifact’s unique, nonlinear in space-time, path is incorporated into an aggregate
view of collective paths of all ancient artifacts in space-time. A comprehensive, highly nonlinear
disequilibrium dynamic framework is needed, to derive a broader view of artifacts’ (single and
collective) paths in space-time, a view that may shed more light onto the very historiography of
archeological sites and their multiple and successive occupant cultures at various points in time,
and over the twelve or so millennia examined here.
Although Disequilibrium Economics and Nonlinear Economics type of analysis is to an extent
being incorporated into contemporary Economics, especially following the advent of Catastrophe
Theory, the Mathematical Theory of Chaos and Fractals, the basic tenets of limited time horizons,
single over time ownership (in both production and consumption of an artifact, or product) and
absence of chained (or spatially and temporally linked sequence of successive) events are absent
from modern Economics and Spatial Human Geography and Spatial Interaction, static or dynamic.
A new framework is needed, and an attempt towards setting up such a framework is put forward
here, to view unique artifact production and flows in the Epipaleolithic to the Bronze Age.

It should also be noted that not only aspects of archeological interest are almost totally absent
from modern Economics and Spatial Analysis, but also in Archeology one rarely comes across
references to any parts of the voluminous Economics and Spatial Analysis literature, with some
minor exceptions to be mentioned in a very brief (indicatively so) subsequent sections of the
paper. The author has noted this fact in his work on Alexander III network of cities’ dynamics in
ref. [1.1], among other references where certain notions from Economics and the Spatial Sciences
were incorporated into the analysis of archeological sites and their monuments, as well as in
references [1.2] and [1.3]. Consequently, this study can be viewed as an attempt to bridge this
gap, and close that disconnect that exists between Archeology on the one hand, and Economics
and the Spatial Sciences on the other, and especially Spatial Dynamical Analysis.

The Production, Making or Assembly, of Economic Products

The artifacts of the type analyzed here, namely items made from the Epipaleolithic (c. 12000 BC)
to the Neolithic down to the Bronze Age (and anecdotally and illustratively down to the Roman
Era), are unique, hand-made and not mass (machine) produced items. Although one may even
be reluctant to use the term “produced” and rather employ the terms “made”, “created” or
“crafted” for ancient artifacts, the difference is qualitative and not substantive. Hence, these
terms will appear interchangeably in this paper. The transition of course from an “Arts and Crafts”
mode of production (and ownership) to an advanced (durable or non-durable) modern day
manufacturing was an evolutionary transition, a dynamical event of significant impact, associated
with demographic and social (cultural) transformations that will play a significant role in the
analysis that follows.

11
Artifacts’ production and assembly involved standard Production Economics based processes,
albeit in a proto form, components and elements (although not necessarily the formal processes)
encountered in treatises on formal production theory found in any introductory textbook on
Economics, see for instance the classical work and textbook by P. Samuelson’s “Economics”, ref.
[2.1]., Chapters 3, 4, 5, 11, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,28, 30, 31, 32. Although these
Production Economics are mostly formed to address mass production, the basic components
examined are also at work in the case of the unique output (artifact) discussed here. Beyond the
Neoclassical Theory of Production proposed by Samuelson, there is also the Wassily Leontief
“Input Output” Theory, see ref. [2.23], which is based on fixed input-output coefficients (input
factor proportions per unit output), that in turn are pegged to some (remaining constant)
technology in place during the production process and applicable over the time horizon
considered. Dynamic versions of that theory incorporate smooth transitions in technology over
fixed (Economics type medium term) time horizons.

Artifacts (of the time period the analysis focuses on, as well as of other periods) employ input
factors (raw material, labor, capital, land, time, technology, knowhow) in their production. These
are the primal variables of some optimization process involved, which determines the behavior
of the producing unit in contemporary industrial production-based Economics, but not
necessarily the production process involved in the making of ancient artifacts. In modern
Economics, usually some profit or output maximizing behavior (involving profit functions/maps),
formal accounting and an optimum inventory control process are at work, all over a very
restrictive time horizon where the exogenous factors remain constant or are fixed over a limited
time horizon. These time constants will be referred to as the “economists time constants”. J.
Maynard Keynes has coined the phrase “in the long run, everyone is dead”, meaning that the
economists’ long run is irrelevant, it is the economists’ short run that matters, see ref. [2.15],
Chapter 3, p. 80. This isn’t the case here, where the archeologists’ long term and its time constant
will be the focus.
The economists’ short run and time constant are in fact irrelevant, let alone impossible to model
if one is interested in tracing the patches of Cultures and their dynamics over the Eurasian space
and over the ten millennia the paper is examining (the 12000 – 2000 BC period). From the vintage
point of this paper, the Keynesian dictum rings as being profoundly myopic. And likewise does
the quest for “balanced” and “sustainable” growth of modern day advocates of various
“environmental causes”. The futility and myopia of all such approaches, as well as their long term
not only irrelevancy but also misguided objectives will become apparent in the course of this
paper. On the other side, there are the dual variables (economic prices) associated with the dual
objective function in the production process, usually the outcome of some cost minimization
objective function, similarly restricted by a limited time horizon. In case of possible input factor
substitution, price ratios determine the optimum mix of input factors at the margins, which are
the first order conditions in the (continuously and smoothly defined) optimization process (in
maps of iso-output quantity curves).

12
For a standard reference on this aspect of Production Theory, see ref. [2.2], Chapter 8. With
regards to ancient artifacts, the ownership mode of the means of production, as well as the
ownership mode of the products (items such as tools and artifacts) isn’t clear at present, although
theories about it exist but not enough evidence to definitely determine provenance. It is likely
that some primitive private means of ownership did always exist, as well as proto communal
proprietary aspects of sites, especially associated with ritualistic or proto religious social activity.

Introduction of a proto pricing scheme might have also been in place in the Neolithic, although it
certainly must had been highly informal at the Early Neolithic, possibly gradually becoming more
formal by the Bronze and Iron Ages as the emergence of more formal markets, stricter
competition and resource scarcity were likely becoming determinants of economic (and social as
well as overall cultural) behavior. It is at the boundary between the Bronze and Iron Ages that we
record major migratory movements in the European Continent, and the beginning of formal
warfare among the major civilizations of that era, the Trojan War of the Homeric legend possibly
being a telltale sign, and one of many large in scale conflicts in the European region, which at the
same time was undergoing a transition from hunting, forestry, fisheries, mining and proto
agriculture to organized agriculture and from a nomadic to formal sedentary residential activity.

Figure A. The Western Eurasian and Northern African space of the archeological landscape
under analysis, and the 200-mile (yellow line) space unit. For more on this space-time unit (STU)
and the map (projection) involved see the text. Source: the author from Google Earth map.

13
In standard Neoclassical Economics, space is rarely considered. Space is formally introduced in
the Spatial Sciences, which to an extent they employ Economics, but they also utilize models and
theories from other disciplines as well, and especially Classical Physics. What is of special interest
here is the proximity to the location where the natural resources, needed for the production of
the artifact, were extracted relative to the point in space the artifact was produced (or
assembled). It is reasonable to expect that the earlier the period under consideration, the closer
the production site must had been to the source of the basic component used in the making of
the artifact. This is so for a host of reasons, inaccessibility to remote locations being a key one,
given both the means of transport available then and the routing system in place. For example,
obsidian or flint based lithic implements must had been made close to the source where obsidian
or flint was extracted, and similarly for limestone, sandstone, basalt, granite or any other stone
type used as a raw material in the making of ancient artifacts. Equivalent is the case with timber,
clay, copper, zinc and tin (compounds used with copper in bronze), and iron-based artifacts, as
well as precious metals (especially silver and gold) as well as rare precious and semi-precious
stones (like lapis lazuli or agate among many others). The trade of obsidian was possible as far
back as the Epipaleolithic, but the distance traveled from the origin of extraction to the
production of tools and their first use must had been a directly proportional function of time: the
later the tool made, the longer the distance from the origin the making and use(s) of the tool.
The Spatial Economics governing production site location relative to the source of raw materials
and the final market locations are explored in any standard textbook on Spatial (Regional)
Science, see for example the classical work in W. Isard’s “Introduction to Regional Science”, ref.
[2.3], Chapters 4, 5, 6, 8. For a survey of related theories, including those of Alfred Weber (iso-
dapanes based spatial theory), Tord Palander (price gradient based market areas), August Losch
(Central Place Theory), and J. H. von Thunen (spatial bid-rent theory) among others, see ref. [2.4],
Chapter 8, and ref. [2.5]. In these theories, locational and other transport related costs (them
being functions of distance travelled, and of other closely associated variables, such as
inaccessibility) figure prominently. Fundamentally, in the Spatial Sciences, space is looked at as
both an impediment to be overcome by expending economic resources, as well as a resource
over which a number of economic uses compete and as a result economic (bid and market
clearing – maximum bid) rents are derived.

It is noted that all the theories mentioned are static (i.e. not dynamic) and they involve long run
(albeit extremely limited over the archeological time constants looked at here) equilibrium
specifications, that is conditions where demand and supply are at equilibrium, since no excess
demand/supply conditions exist and the market pricing in effect clears them. This must be added
to the other restrictive consideration already mentioned, namely that these theories involve
mass production and not the production of a single and unique artifact. Nonetheless, they supply
the infrastructure on which to base the theory suggested here, in which in addition very long in
time horizons will be incorporated plus (disequilibrium, or far from equilibrium) dynamics. Key
aspects in their theoretical construction are spatial agglomeration issues, i.e., “scale effects”
(increasing/decreasing returns), and (positive or negative) spatial and temporal externalities.
14
 The Consumption, or Use, of Economic Products
The Theory of Consumption (or use) of artifacts must conform to the basic tenets of the
Neoclassical Microeconomic Theory of Consumption, see ref. [2.5], Chapter 2. Individuals
(owners of the artifact) choose among alternatives consumption bundles so that they maximize
some perceived utility level, subject to various perceived constraints, key among them being their
income and time constraints. Again, the dual of this primal objective function involving
commodities, in this case the tangible item(s), the artifact(s), is a function that entails minimizing
perceived costs, with the interpretation of the dual variables being the economic “bid rent” or
“bid price” the individual consumer (user) is willing to pay to acquire the item(s), or artifacts(s).
Income inequalities are recognized, although such inequalities are taken as exogenous, and are
not endogenously derived by these theoretical perspectives. Individuals are incorporated as
statistical averages, belonging to some (more or less arbitrarily defined) classes.
Again, it is noted that this is a static, long-run (under the limiting conditions already noted)
equilibrium formulation that doesn’t involve dynamics of the type faced in this study. The
Calculus of Variations and the Nonlinear Dynamics which standard Economic textbooks
incorporate (like for instance the one in ref. [2.6], Chapter 8), in addressing dynamical consumer
behavior, involve a (temporally fixed, and statistical average) consumer with a fixed time horizon
and smooth, concave, continuous utility function and well behaving (mostly linear) constraints.
Such is not the case in the problem of an artifact undergoing a chain of owners involving
successive (possibly inter-generational) events and extended over significantly lengthy time
periods, possibly involving millennia and a succession of different owners. Over such lengthy time
spans involving archeological (not economic) time constants, where consumers behavior changes
drastically, fixed in form objective functions and constraints render such analysis irrelevant.
Spatial Sciences, including Spatial Geography, Regional Science, Spatial (Urban and Regional)
Economics are all based on some form or another of gravity linked spatial interactions, basically
a Newtonian Physics construct. Spatial Interaction Theory, see for example ref. [2.6], asserts that
population (or any stock) flow among an origin and a destination is directly proportional to some
“mass” at the interacting locations (origin and destination) and inversely proportional to some
function of the distance between them.

Distribution and Flows in Space-Time of Economic Products

Once produced, artifacts commenced their life long chain of trips to and by the various owners
that would use them at different time periods and spaces, till their eventual retirement – the
final resting place that the contemporary archeologist would find them. Although the literature,
Economic and Geographic, is rich on aspects of production and consumption, as well as trade
flows of mass produced commodities, the focus on a specific item and artifact is totally absent
from these analyses. For a description of the various trade related theories, see ref. [2.5].

15
Statistical averages are usually employed, which may be disaggregated by certain (more or less
arbitrarily defined) classes of products. Although to some extent product differentiation is
incorporated into these theoretical models, see on this the classical reference by Edward
Chamberlin (ref. [2.7]), individual products’ path(s) are not addressed. It is this inherently
engrained problem of dis-aggregation (and also aggregation, or classification, thus taxonomy)
that has plagued Neoclassical Economics (and not only) since its inception. Partly due to
institutional, and even constitutional, restraints and partly due to physical constraints which
render any theoretical proposition almost impossible to empirically test at an individual (person
or item) level, these theoretical propositions derived from Neoclassical Economic Theory and
Spatial Analysis are of limited use to the subject under investigation here. Although, as already
noted, they do offer a solid ground to launch the discussion that ensues.
In modern Economic Theory, flow of commodities (be that individual products such as
spacecrafts or telescopes, or mass produced for consumption items such as cars or any other
household consumption item) is addressed in the various theories found in the literature on
Trade (retail or wholesale), local, regional, national or international. The basic element of any
trade theory is the concept of locational comparative advantages, leading to spatial specialization
in the export of commodities in regional, national and international trade. This is a notion
equivalent to that of division of labor in Labor Economics and the Neoclassical Theory of
Production. In both, the arbitrary and unevenly distributed initial endowments (born by a
location or an individual) is the propelling force in the presence (or absence) of such locational
advantages. Proximity to markets is also a basic element in a site’s locational comparative
advantage(s).

Spatial Interaction: Statics and Dynamics

A link between the Neoclassical Economic Theory, especially Microeconomics and Trade Theory,
and the Spatial Sciences is Central Place Theory and the flow of inputs into the production
process, from hierarchically lower level (smaller in scale or population size) centers to upper level
ones (larger in scale or population size), and outputs of the production process from upper level
to lower level centers in the (static) Central Place Theory scheme. Central Place Theory comprises
spatial centers exercising monopoly and monopsony power over their subordinate centers and
their hinterlands. A Zipf rank-size distribution rule governs these Central Place Theory schemes.

Any Central Place Theory scheme is served by a land based (and in contemporary times, air)
transport network, over which the flow of commodities (and population) takes place. Primary
centers are served by upper echelon transport links (the Interstate Highway System in the US
being a good example); whereas the lower level centers are served by regional, state, county and
local road links forming regional and progressively more local transport networks. The presence
of such proto Central Place Theory schemes and their corresponding proto land, riverine and
maritime transport networks must had been in place during the Neolithic, gradually evolving into

16
the developed land (road) and seafaring (including ports) network of the Roman era. A special
transition in this inter-regional transport network was the riverine to maritime transition in
navigation and the flow of population and commodities over water that apparently took place
sometime early in the Neolithic, especially in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian theaters, as well
as in the Danube river valley in Europe, among the many other major rivers in the study area.

Although Spatial Interaction Theory, in land use population density patterns is consistent with
the outcomes of standard Neoclassical Economics, the foundations it stands on go beyond
Economics. Spatial interaction draws from Physics as well. Concepts from Classical Newtonian
Physics, involving Gravity related theories are employed, as well as maximum Entropy
formulations, see A. G. Wilson’s work in ref. [2. 17]. Again, this is work undertaken in conjunction
with equivalent work in Economics by N. Georgescu-Roegen, see ref. [2.18]. Later, work from
Catastrophe Theory and Chaos Theory, on how even simple dynamical systems can be hiding in
them very complex dynamics, in all fields of Science (Physical, Biological and Social) and based on
the pioneering work by Henri Poincare in the early part of the 20th century, was demonstrated in
the works by E. Lorenz, see ref. [2.19] in Meteorology, R. May in Mathematical Ecology, see ref.
[2.13] and in a variety of other Social Science fields, including Economics and Econometrics, as
well as Sociology and Political Science. For a survey on how this body of work affected in specific
the Spatial Sciences, the subject of this paper, see the work by J. B. Rosser Jr, in ref. [2.20]. What
will be further discussed here in reference to the subjects of Socio-Spatial Evolution during the
Neolithic, and the dynamic paths of ancient artifact in space-time during that time period over
Western Eurasia will largely draw from work along the lines of these fields.

A Brief Survey of the Literature in Archeology

Possibly the only notable reference to Economic Theory in the Archeology of the past is the book
by M. D. Sahlins, see ref. [2.8]. Although the focus was not on artifacts but individuals, clans and
proto communities during the Stone Age (Upper Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic and Neolithic), the
study brought into the archeologists’ vocabulary some notions from Economics albeit little from
the Spatial Sciences and that from a very qualitative, not particularly analytical viewpoint. The
point Sahlins tried to make was that early Neolithic societies were “affluent” had a lot of leisure
time at their disposal, and that they were not much conflict ridden or geared to experience
conflict. A gift-oriented mode of trading artifacts was at work, and that a proto form of “exchange
value” had set in the transfer (mostly barter involved) of artifacts (or products of a mostly
domestically based primitive production process). Although insightful to an extent, basic tenets
of evolution in the social composition and organization of primitive human societies and their
phase transitions as well replenishment and transformations in space-time, responsible for the
maps this study attempts to describe and analyze, are largely absent from the Sahlins work.
Hence, a vast field is left to cover, plenty of unexplored territory is left wide open, and only the
initial steps are taken below in an attempt to prospect and survey it.

17
 The Nonlinear Mathematics of Ancient Artifacts’ Paths in Space-Time

Introductory Comments

The three basic phase transitions in an ancient artifact’s life span.

At the beginning of an artifact’s life cycle, the making of the artifact took place, at some point in
space-time. It took the already listed input factors in production for its creation: raw material(s),
time, labor, capital (part of which is what in modern parlance is referred to as financing the
production, developing and managing its assembly), land, and most critically technological know-
how, that archeologists usually assign to “cultures” or to “styles” or “schools’ mainly associated
with their morphological characteristics and materials used, and on the basis of which a
taxonomy (or phenotypical grouping) is set. The ancient artifact was made as a unique item,
however, and it was not necessarily mass produced. Product differentiation was at its peak, the
earlier into the Neolithic one travels. The primordial economic production process could consist
of a proto assembly line type production, as the ancient artifact could have been made in a
primitive laboratory, workshop or studio, at possibly a multi-use primitive residence, quite likely
a common space, or simply at some outdoors location of a primordial community’s land domain.
The next phase in the artifact’s life cycle was the beginning of a chain reaction: the transfer of
the artifact to its first of a number of users, as the artifact changes hands in a set of changes in
the artifact’s ownership status. This chain reaction involves a chain of linked trips, each owner
(and space) representing a phase in the item’s life cycle. Under different owners, the cultural use
of the artifact fulfilled the social function it was originally made to perform, or subsequently was
altered or carry out. In each phase, its acquisition by the individual owner who used it, or by the
social group that utilized it to carry out some cultural function, only in part followed the cannons
of Consumer Behavior as presented in the Theory of Neoclassical Economics. However, the chain
reaction of successive ownerships and trips status, in effect the transitions in cultural utilization
of the item, is a critical component of an artifact’s life cycle that Neoclassical Theory doesn’t
address, and this is where the theoretical model suggested here focuses its attention.
At some point in space-time, the artifact meets a catastrophic event: its break up and destruction.
This might not necessarily mean that the artifact is finally buried. It means that the long process
of the item’s various pieces to be buried, where the archeological pick-ax eventually will unearth
them, commences.
Hence, and in summary, these are in general the three main (and their various sub-categories)
phase transitions any ancient artifact has undergone. Fully describing and modeling these phases
(and sub-phases) is of paramount importance in identifying the historiography not only of
individual artifacts but their locations where found by the archeologist. Here, an effort will be
made to mathematically state these transitions.

18
 Product differentiation in and uniqueness of ancient artifacts
A key attribute of almost all ancient artifacts (including small scale artifacts, like clay or stone
figurines, small ceramic vessels, amulets, and personal decorative items including rings, bracelets
and other forms of jewelry) is that they are all different than all others considered by the
archeologists’ taxonomic breakdown as belonging to the same group, be that a culture, cluster,
school, or style, or even time period. They all have their own minor differences, acting like a
fingerprint. Mass production was not part of Neolithic Art or Architecture. This condition is of
foundational character in discussing ancient artifacts, and its import can’t be overstated. It might
also have some Epistemological interest, as one might argue that at some scale of observation
no two items, even mass produced in the same assembly line and in neighboring time spans,
exhibit differences, however minute. This uniqueness attribute of ancient artifacts negates one
of the pillars in Economic Theory: the marginality condition of optimum pricing and production
schedules of Neoclassical Economics’ Theory of Production. The same way that a Hubble Space
Telescope isn’t the output of an economic maximum profit production function subject to input
factor constraints on a production possibility frontier, so are Neolithic artifacts. Three examples
will be shown and briefly discuss next to make the point that artifacts are unique.

First, the circa 5800 BC “seated goddess” a fired clay figurine from Catalhoyuk, shown flanked by
two lions, lionesses or leopards, see Figure 1.1, with a height of about 12 cm, and according to
ref. [3.2] the goddess is overweighed and also giving birth to a newborn whose head is barely
visible. Second, the circa 4th quarter of the 4th millennium BC “sleeping lady” from the Maltese
Hypogeum, Figure 1.2, with a hypothetical rectangular cuboid encasing it and with dimensions 7
cm in height, 12 cm in length, and 6.8 cm in width, ref. [3.5]. Third, the circa 1345 BC Nefertiti
Bust crafted by Thutmose and found in his Amarna workshop, see Figure 1.3, a statue made out
of limestone (and covered with stucco) and with dimensions about 49.5 cm in height, 36.3 cm in
width, while the depth of the statue is a relative measurement and depends on a number of
factors, which are extensively discussed and analyzed (as is the entire Geometry of the statue)
by the author in ref. [1.5]. However, beyond uniqueness of an ancient artifact, in the discussion
on product differentiation, aspect of and problems with taxonomy itself enter the stage. The
author has addressed this topic in ref. [1.4], Appendix C. Many arguments offered there will not
be repeated here, except in summary. The main point on product differentiation for the period
examined here is simply the uniqueness of the artifact, of course. Any labeling of an artifact as
belonging to a group, defined as “culture”, “school” or “style” (no matter the expert who has
suggested so first, or the degree of acceptance the labeling has subsequently enjoyed among the
archeological community) is more or less an arbitrary designation, based on qualitative
assessments and not on any hard facts. It can’t be otherwise, due to the great number of (major
or minor) dis-similarities encountered in comparing two artifacts that presumably belong to the
same culture, school or style. Clustering, grouping or set formation on the basis of within vs
among group variances on key variables is always partial. There are always variables along which
within group variances are not zero. And of course, even along the major variables considered,
within group variances are also never zero.
19
Figure 1.1. The c 5800 BC “seated goddess” from Catalhoyuk. Source of photo: ref. [3.2].

20
 Figure 1.2. The c 3300 -3000 BC “sleeping lady” from the Hal-Salfieni Hypogeum at Malta.
Source of photo: ref. [3.4].

Figure 1.3. The circa 1345 BC “Nefertiti Bust” from Amarna. The Thutmose’s artifact falls
outside the time horizon of the study. But it is an example of uniqueness in the making of ancient
artifacts. In addition, it is an example of an artifact that didn’t travel (possibly due to its size and
weight), as it was found in Thutmose’s workshop at Amarna. Source of photo: ref. [3.6].

Labeling is in any case an act of assigning to the labeled culture or item a fuzzy designation by a
labeling agent or agency. Attributes assigned to a designee are put forward on the basis of
appraisals by individuals or agencies far removed from the actual making of the artifact and its
surrounding and operative then multiplicity of cultural conditions. Further, both the spatial and
temporal extents of any ancient artifact or culture designated as belonging to a particular
“culture” or “school” or “style” are fuzzy. It is extremely difficult if not impossible to pinpoint
with accuracy the time period an artifact was made, or the exact location made, or its school. It
could be the product of an innovator, or a mainstream artist, or a late style imitator, just like any
product offered in any contemporary market place.

21
Identifying cultural or style periods entails an additional difficulty when dealing with extensive
time spans in the Neolithic and subsequent time periods, including even the Roman period. These
time spans are considerable, and the evidence is characterized by paucity. Statistical sampling is
limited, due to the small number of artifacts in evidence, their differentiating attributes, hence
severely inhibiting the chance to derive solid statistical inferences in testing taxonomy related
hypotheses on both aggregates (cultures) or isolated items (artifacts). In summary, consideration
of the uniqueness of an ancient artifact is a sine qua non for a proper treatment of its individual
provenance and life cycle chain events and phase transitions it has undergone.

Evolution in the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic

Introduction. Some key factors need be addressed, at the outset, in putting forward the
evolutionary theoretical model suggested in this paper. These factors will be shown how they are
to be incorporated into the models put forward, which is meant to be used in analyzing
Evolutionary events during the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic, the Eras under investigation here, in
the Western Eurasian and Northern African Region, the focal spatial extent of the study.
The original demographic base: extremely low population levels and densities. In the dynamic
model to be presented, initial conditions are paramount. The starting human (economic, social,
cultural) conditions were those of the Upper Paleolithic. Among them the first and foremost
factor is the extremely low population base of the Era within the Region under study. The
population level, although not possible to precisely gauge, was for sure far less than the current
(or that level post the Industrial Revolution era, the period from which most of the current Social
Theories emerged) population level. The Western Eurasian population hovered about the one to
20 million, see for a discussion and references the work by this author in ref. [1.1].

Economic, social, demographic, political, geographic, climatic factors and forces at work with a
population at about one percent of one percent from current levels, the intensity of factors, the
presence of currently unknown but present back then factors, and their interactive forces linking
them must had been different. Competition at such low densities simply isn’t the same as it is in
a world of 7.6 billion people, with densities about ten thousand times greater.
Commensurable to the significantly lower than present total population as well as current gross
population density levels must have also been the total number of artifacts (tools and
implements, as well as final items for everyday use, for both consumption and production
activity) and their densities per person. Of course, a broad variety of tools and other cultural
artifacts were used for administrative, economic, social, and any other culture-related
engagement, employment and occupation that involved elites and upper social strata population
groups associated with religious practices and civil management. And so was the stock of (durable
or non-durable) knowledge possessed by the human population stocks of that Era. These startup
conditions and subsequent transitions are to be explicitly incorporated into the background of
the dynamical structure of the model, to be discussed in the next section of the paper.
22
 Evolutionary Principles
First evolutionary principle: increasing complexity and cumulative processes. A fundamental
principle from Physics and Chemistry, as well as Biology and also from Social Sciences, is that
systems (however defined) involve from simple to more complex forms. This principle involves
the injection, introduction or entry of new and the exit of pre-existing elements and forces in the
structure under study. The human communities, from the end of the Upper Paleolithic to the tail
end of the Neolithic and its boundary with the Bronze Age, underwent increased in complexity
evolutionary events, punctuated by major social (individual and collective) activity marked by the
presence of key architectonic monuments, of an increased complexity in their internal and
external morphology, engineering and functionality. The increasingly sophisticated complexity in
form and construction offer testament to these socio-spatial, temporally spaced at an increased
spatial and temporal density phase transitions.
These permanent, spatially and temporally fixed, structures offer not only powerful testimonial
to these societies’ transitional phases, but they are also vivid reminders of the fact that they
constitute the byproduct of an immense and chaotic spatiotemporal motion of a number of
people from numerous evolving cultures carrying with them a great deal of mobile artifacts
contributing to these monuments’ planning, construction, upgrading, metamorphotic events,
maintenance, upkeep (or lack thereof) and eventual demise and destruction. Activity on location-
fixed structures and in human communities is cumulative over time. This accumulation directly
implies (as well as it generates) increased complexity in both the monuments and the underlying
organization of the societies that built them and the means, tools and artifacts they employed in
constructing them. Hence one must conceptualize that all aspects of production, consumption,
communications, trade were gradually moved from simpler to more complex configurations.
New exchange processes and instruments (market conditions and products) were gradually
introduced, as life in general was becoming more sophisticated in leaps and bounds, the product
of new ideas and knowledge entering the social scene at any point in Western Eurasian and
Northern African Neolithic space-time, cumulatively augmenting the knowledge base of any local
community. Such complexity is primarily sought to be described by the nonlinearities of the
dynamic model suggested here, as the outcome of the state variables’ dynamics.
Second evolutionary principle: transition from proto to increasingly developed stages. Another
fundamental component of the evolutionary aspects of societies at the period focusing onto here
is the transitions from a proto stage (be that agricultural production, mining or tool making) to
gradually more developed, varied and more effectively organized, more efficiently managed, and
more profitably exploited means of both production, consumption and trade. In addition,
innovations in technology, on all aspects of social system’s functions, be that production or
consumption and the sudden introduction of new ideas and products (be them artifacts, built
structures or consumables) would enhance development at some locations and usher the reverse
and obsolescence in others. These innovations are usually accompanied by phase transitions and
abrupt jumps (upturns or downturns) in the economics of societies.
23
Major innovations are of course more likely to trigger such dynamics than minor innovations.
Timing in space-time of such innovations, their spatial and temporal density are key factors in the
developmental process. New artifacts, deadly or benign in their use, are also accompanied by
innovations in architectural styles and engineering construction. This principle is distinct from the
third principle, addressed next, but strongly linked to it. The qualitatively described phase
transitions in this principle is what one can detect and qualitatively present in the dynamics to
be modeled here.
Third evolutionary principle: life cycle events and their speeds. The term “life cycle” is just an
analogy, for lack of a better term. Human aggregates (be them communities, societies or
cultures) do not act at their initial and final stages as infants or octogenarians do. They are not
actually “born” and they do not physically “die”. There is some linguistic interest to this analogy
and specifically in how language and meaning are connected. There are also some equally
interesting issues associated with the existence of “origins”, the presence of an initial condition
or a beginning of a process. But both of these issues fall outside the main scope of this paper,
although the topic of a “beginning” and of an “ending” will preoccupy this analysis a bit.

At the center of the discussion on “life cycles’ it is noted that all products of human activity (from
small scale mobile artifacts to large scale immobile structures), along with the formation of
human groups (from clans, communities, societies, cultures) undergo a roughly and qualitatively
similar succession of phases to a life cycle event: from birth (somewhat of an entry, or
appearance, or a “take off” to use the W.W. Rostow expression, see ref. [2.9], in space-time), to
growth, to decline to eventual death (again, somewhat of an exit, or “landing”, or disappearance
in space-time) over a relevant spatial and temporal span. That span has spatiotemporally fuzzy
borders.
Numerous factors interfere with the spatiotemporal extend of an artifact, innovation and
introduction of new ones, and addiction by their users to existing ones being two key push/pull
forces in that dynamic. Introduction (entry) of new population groups and new agents in
production and trade must had been a dominant characteristic of Neolithic Life in the space of
Western Eurasia, as was the exit and obsolescence of existing stocks. The later into the period
under analysis, the fiercer and deadlier as well as frequent the Schumpeterian gales of creative
destruction were. See on these creative gales of destruction and a theory about their generation
in Schumpeter’s classical work, ref. [2.10]. Schumpeter didn’t make a distinction among local mini
tornadoes, typhoons and category 5 type hurricanes in his vivid analogy – but there are
differences, and these differences are significant and not only in weather patterns but also in
Economics, Human Spatial Geography and Cultural Dynamics.
In Economics, the closest one comes to life cycle events are the technological innovation linked
controversial Kondratieff waves or hypercycles, see ref. [2.21] and the Kuznets cycles or swings,
mostly linked to political short-term turnover, plus a number of other questionable (on statistical
grounds, where in a world of data various individuals can “see” patterns where none exists)
cycles, see ref. [2.22]. This is the type of dynamical processes that the model to be presented
24
here in this paper is particularly geared to demonstrate in the phase space of its solutions. The
transitions from the Epipaleolithic to the pre-Pottery Neolithic phases A and B, and then to the
Chalcolithic are examples where innovations of new techniques in production of ceramic vessels
and the spinning wheel; new mining output, copper, zinc, tin etc., as well as the invention of the
wheel and the points in space-time where they first appeared are important components for
testing the evolutionary model suggested, and calibrating it hence deriving the values of its key
parameters at specific point in time over the archeological horizon of this study.
Fourth evolutionary principle: from informal and proto to formal and complex institutions. The
third basic evolutionary principle that needs to be considered in the study of early to late
Neolithic human societies is the gradual (and often abrupt) transition from informal, partially
organized, almost impromptu and relatively ephemeral organization of human political activity
and institutions to formal and lasting economic, social and political (cultural) structures, with
symbols, artifacts and Architectures that embody those initially informal and later formal cultural
(including of course religious or cult) units. Although explicitly such informal/formal forms and
institutional transitions do not explicitly appear in the model to be proposed, they can be
incorporated in extensions of it.

Fifth evolutionary principle: gradual spatiotemporal convergence. Isolated human communities

(or clans) of hunter-gatherers from the Upper Paleolithic over the vast expanses of Western
Eurasia gradually integrated with neighboring human social groups, clans or communities.
Undoubtedly, the contact must had been not always peaceful. Violent interaction is quite likely,
although limited due to the low population levels and particularly due to extremely low
population densities. In any case, from initial heterogeneous human population groups (in both
Genetics, i.e., DNA structure, and cultural backgrounds) towards a greater degree of
homogeneity must had been the outcome. From initial spatial isolation, a gradually greater
integration emerged in time and space.

A Human Ecology started to be formed, whereby all five basic ecological associations (see ref.
[2.13] on them) and interactions emerged: competition, cooperation, predation, amensalism,
and commensalism appeared as human communities exited a state of (relative or complete)
isolation and entered a state of more or less communal living and spatial interaction. It must be
emphasized though that the intensity of the inter-group (as well as intra-group) ecological
interactions must had been far less then than now, due to the low population and their spatial
densities levels. Similar convergence must also had taken place by integrated Demographics.
The Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, see ref. [2.11], was not present there and then; and neither
was Malthusian population controls, see ref. [2.12]. These factors entered gradually; and on the
way to a modern industrial society, their presence was differentially felt over the millennia. In
reference to the term “convergence”, it must also be noted that here the term is used in its strict
spatial sense, and not in any other interpretation of the term to imply any form of cultural or
Genetics based convergence. All evidence we have, at the temporal scale of analysis used here,
the archeological time constant, no “cultural or genetic convergence” has been recorded. But the
25
validity of the five Mathematical Ecology associations did play in increasingly important role in
the evolution of the various societies and cultural patches to be looked at shortly. These different
ecological associations enter the model to be presented in the form of its construction, in ref.
[1.7].
Sixth evolutionary principle: environmental shocks. This is a factor usually taken to be an
exogenous force in the field of Economics, and hence little attention is paid to it. Yet, its import
can’t be understated to the extent that societal evolution is concerned. Many categories of
shocks fall under this evolutionary principle, both of a sharp duration and a long-lasting impact.
On the short term, sharp shocks include (although they are not limited to) earthquakes (of
different magnitudes); and accidents at sea and land, where in the case of sea faring accidents
artifacts are buried at the seabed and they become of extreme import to archeologists as they
offer a window and a glimpse into the life of an artifact before its demise and burial.
On the other hand, long lasting environmental shocks, like for instance those that contribute to
a gradual rise (or fall) of the sea level, as well as certain climate related environmental impacts
(dryness and temperature drops, as those experiences during the Younger Dryas of the Late
Epipaleolithic and early Neolithic) carry considerable influence on and significantly impact the
evolutionary profile and the socio-spatial behavior of population stocks and their inter-spatial
flows, since these environmental shocks directly impact human populations’ ecological niches,
hence access to resources, a factor critically affecting tool and artifacts making and use. On the
Mathematical Ecology of population stocks’ niches, and their six types of interactions, see Robert
May, ref. [2.13]. In the model to be outlined in this paper, such environmental shocks can be with
some ease incorporated into the analysis as exogenous changes upon the model’s environment
depicting parameters.
Seventh evolutionary principle: genetics/epidemics. Finally, a critical (and little paid attention
to in the Economics as well as the Human Geography literature) force is the evolution of social
systems’ admixture of haplogroups, as identified by studies of individual specimens in the field
of Genetics. Population stocks’ DNA structure undergoes changes in time and space, and some
of that will be demonstrated shortly when cultural patches formed over space-time will be
presented. Population stocks’ vulnerability to and the short as well as long lasting effects of
epidemics on population stocks’ dynamic allocation patterns over space is a topic that must be
examined closely in any study of societal evolution in archeological space-time. It is simply
mentioned here, as in-depth analyses of this aspect of human spatiotemporal evolution are
lacking. In Malthus, see ref. [2.12], scant references are made to the effect that disease (among
other factors) govern to an extent population growth. But the long-term effects of such
epidemics in space-time are not that simple to either ascertain or record over archeological
horizons. When a virus or a bacterium wipes out a region’s population, but the region is
eventually repopulated by a group with a greater population growth rate than the one wiped
out, the end (long term) effect may have not been a total reduction to the overall population
level at that location. In the theoretical model proposed in this paper such Genetics and

26
Epidemiology related forces are not included. The model can be extended along those lines,
nonetheless. It would require however a finer space-time unit of analysis.

The Nature of the Human Settlements’ Evolution in Space-Time

A continuum of dynamic disequilibria. In this subsection, the anticipated behavior of the model
in phase space is expanded and elaborated. In sharp contrast to Neoclassical Economics and its
deep 18th century roots in describing (and prescribing) Protestant Ethos based Capitalism, as
eloquently described by the sociologist Max Weber, see ref. [2.14], the evolution of human
societies in the dawn of the Epipaleolithic to the tail end of the Neolithic, when viewed from the
time scale of centuries (what in this paper is referred to as the “archeological time constant”),
were but a sequence of (at times sharp) disequilibria (conditions that Ilya Prigogine has described
as “far from equilibrium”, see ref. [2.16]) and having undergone radical change.
Any reading of any map produced by any archeologist covering that 10-millenium long period
would record a constant appearance, disappearance, switching and shifting, and in general
rearrangement of Cultures in space-time within time spans of centuries. No place has remained
immune from such cultural change and spatiotemporal transformations, where at times such
change has been nothing less than what one can describe as substantial and quite dramatic. This
is vividly illustrated by the sequence of three maps shown next. In analyzing the qualitative
features of the three maps shown below, the basic question one is forced to ask is whether the
spatial extent and the “cultural patching” of the space can be scaled so that some testable spatial
and temporal hypotheses can be put forward and their spatiotemporal patterns analyzed. To that
end, the search for an appropriate spatial and temporal unit becomes paramount. Hence, and
following the presentation of these maps, the study will turn towards establishing such a space-
time unit. A look at these maps reveals an unrelenting flow of new population stocks and the
invasion of new Cultures at all points in space-time of the Western Eurasian and Northern Africa
post Upper Paleolithic Region. Accompanied by an equivalent flow in artifacts and their styles
these cultures carried with them in their movement artifacts. These flows of cultural influences,
cultural infusion and diffusion, dramatically changed the cultural landscape, at times in the blink
of an archeological eye and often catastrophically for the invaded Cultures. Cultural invasions can
be either overpowering local, autochthonous at the time cultures. They also could entail little
consequential cultural change, as both newcomers and old resident cultures coexisted. Or, it
could be so that the invading culture was overly influenced by the existing culture.
All the above-mentioned factors are possibilities, and the exact impact at any given point in
physical space and time almost impossible to exactly determine at present. This ambiguity,
coupled with the inherent fuzziness as to what constitutes precisely a “Culture” and fuzziness in
its spatial and temporal borders render the task of delineating phases of cultural evolution
extremely difficult, if not straight out impossible, to clearly describe and record. Hence, the
analysis remains at a qualitative level, impossible to fully penetrate its quantitative domain.

27
Figure 2.1. Map of Early Neolithic, post PPNA/B, involving both Archeology and suggested
Genetics. It is noted that in the above map and contrary to what is noted on it, T1a is not a Y-
chromosome haplogroup but a mitDNA chromosome haplogroup. This map (as do all the three
maps offered here) contain major errors in their Archeology, as well as in the suggested Genetics
data they supply. They are hence shown as only indicative of the underlying spatiotemporal
dynamics they contain. For reservations regarding the veracity of this and the ensuing related
maps, see text. Source of graph is on the map.

28
Figure 2.2. Map of Late Neolithic involving Archeology and Genetics; see Figure 2.1 for note
regarding the map’s errors, in both Archeology and suggested genetics. Beyond the potential
errors of the map that have been noted, one can argue that similar fuzziness, ambiguity and
errors (involving any type of social data, however collected and by whatever agency) can also be
encountered in any contemporary maps of human societies. Use is only for illustrative purposes.
See text regarding the accuracy of this map. Source of diagram on the map.

29
Figure 2.3. Map of Early Bronze Age, with suggested Archeology and Genetics. It must be also
noted that although the potential errors in the suggestions made here have been duly noted, no
map claiming to depict these eras can be error free, and can only remain as “suggestions” with
serious qualifiers. Paucity of data and lack of meticulous documentation of archeological
evidence are shortcomings that can’t be easily overcome at this stage on evidence from that past
period in human prehistory. Notes regarding accuracy of this map (and of the previous two) are
in the main text. Source of the diagram on the map.

30
In a set of maps, shown in Figures 2.a, 2.b, and 2.c, a series of archeological, cultural and Genetics
(based on “suggested” DNA composition of their population stocks) spatiotemporal sequences
are presented. There are numerous points of contention that one can raise in reference to these
maps. Accuracy in their archeological designations and their space-time periods are certainly
areas one can find serious shortcomings; along with inaccuracies and errors in the suggested DNA
designations, all these weaknesses can raise question the accuracy and veracity of these maps.
On top of all that, they lack sources and references and, apparently, they have never been
published in scientific Journals. But accuracy and reliability along these lines are not the objective
for having them here in this paper. It is the grain of truth they contain, in their (however
erroneous) detail. The sequence of the three maps unmistakably point to the dynamical features
of any similarly (and possibly more accurately) composed map. It is a model that could potentially
describe and explain the qualitative (not necessarily the exact quantitative) features of these
maps that is sought to be constructed here in this paper.

Any DNA analysis of the population stock of any sub-region of that Region at any sub-time period
in that temporal frame of reference would attest to these dramatic events. Reference [3.7], the
source reference of these maps, contains numerous shortcomings. Drawing of such maps is
inevitably flawed to some degree, for reasons that have to do with definitions and labeling of
cultures, the paucity of data available, the Genetics and their inherent ambiguities in clustering,
and other factors. But, to a large extent, these maps are qualitatively representative of a
drastically and constantly evolving cultural collage type landscape of that archeological period at
that archeological Region. These maps demonstrate a spatial patchwork allocation of cultures,
with partially overlapping representative DNA Y-chromosome haplogroups (at times mitDNA, as
is the case for the T1a haplogroup) admixtures. To model and describe this type of maps and
their dynamics, conventional current analysis is inadequate. A new basis is needed. And since the
intent here is to produce a theory that would identify the mobility of artifacts in space-time, a
dynamic mapping of the underlying evolutionary transitions is necessary.
It is also noted that subjects of convergence can be set to rest in this perspective, at least within
the archeological time frame and spatial extent analyzed in this paper. The notion of “convergent
Evolution” in Biology isn’t of course applicable here, as we discuss an archeological not a
biological time constant. A far greater than the archeological would be the anthropological time
constant, but to a lesser extent than the biological time constant. Cultures, as the sequence of
maps in Figures 2.1-3 demonstrates, do not “converge”. They either invade and replace previous
local cultures, or are being invaded and eventually disappear, either gradually or abruptly –
something that analysis at this grain of spatiotemporal units can’t resolve.
The Space-Time Units (STUs). Over physical space, in the Western Eurasian and Northern Africa
spatial extent analyzed here, the 200 miles length (measured as the length of an arc on Earth’s
surface, and not its corresponding either actual or projected in 2-d chord) will be an approximate
spatial unit, defining a map with an arced grid pattern in which a square of about 40,000 square
miles is its unit (modulus). Time-wise, the unit length of two centuries will be the temporal extent

31
of the map’s modulus. Hence, eight million square mile years (to be designated as 8 m-SMY) is
the resolution of the space-time unit, to be designated as an STU, creating an ellipsoidal grid
pattern on the map under analysis, over which spatial-temporal cultural patches appeared and
disappeared within the overall time frame of about ten millennia (12000 – 2000 BC). The 2-
century long time unit is an arbitrary time length, offering 50 timewise steps in the iterative
dynamical process to be outlined in this paper. Hence, the overall spatial and temporal
framework is, 3000x3000x10000 square miles–years, or 9x10^10 SMYs. In calibrating the
theoretical model, offered in the sequel to this paper, ref. [1.7], alternative spatial and temporal
lengths can be tried, when model parameter calibrations are invoked. Either of a shorter or
longer duration and of greater or shorter spatial borders, alternative spatial and temporal
boundaries of an STU may be considered, and could be tested in calibrating the model’s proposed
parameter values. A 2-century time unit is, according to this author, an optimum temporal length.
A shorter one would be too detailed, facing significant lack data to test and calibrate. Whereas,
a longer time length would be too coarse, for any practical use. At the same time, the specific
placement of the grid on the Region under consideration is also an arbitrary. Marginally (or
basically) different placements of the grid on the map could be examined.
In Figures 3.1 and 3.2 the spatial North-South and East-West extent of the Western Eurasian and
North-Eastern African space covered here is shown, in arc lengths. It extends about 3000 miles
on a North to South axis, covering the Earth’s surface from about the latitude (parallel) 70 North,
to about latitude 25 North, in Earth’s coordinate system. It spans approximately 3000 miles on
an East to West axis from about the longitude 9 West to the longitude 50 East, in Earth’s
coordinate system. The Earth’s ellipsoidal curvature, and the latitude-longitude coordinate
system overlaid on that part of the Earth’s surface, outline the STU based grid, with the 200-mile
arcs extent of the spatial unit at the very center of Europe close to the 48 parallel. The East-West
length varies, increasing in width’s arc length towards the South, and decreasing towards the
North. Producing a map, on which such spatial units are drawn, requires some geographical map
drawing sophistication. The Physical Geography and Cartography literature are voluminous and
quite technical on these counts. No matter the method used to draw a map of the Region under
study, it will entail some degree of approximation, since projections of an ellipsoidal surface onto
a 2-d map are involved. Projections of the Region’s spatial extent on the Earth’s surface can
appear as either a Mercator projection, i.e., a cylindrical projection of the Earth’s ellipsoidal
(approximated by a spherical) surface onto a cylinder, see ref. [3.8], and Figure 3.3; or a Gall-
Peters projection, see ref. [3.9], and Figure 3.4. More discussion of some central issues in drawing
such maps is offered under these two Figures 3.3, 4. Within that time frame, the 3000x3000-mile
arced grid contains 225 (15x15) space-wise modular units (STUs) within each time layer, for a
total of 11,250 STUs. In ref. [1.7] distances among STUs are addressed. These distances must be
considered from the spatial-temporal barycenter of all STUs. In addition, major climatic (the
Younger Dryas being one of them), and geological events occurred within that Region over the
time period covering ten millennia. The gradual or abrupt rise and fall in sea and ocean surface
levels, especially in the regions surrounding the English Chanel, the Black Sea, and the

32
Mediterranean Basin have been not only significant from a geological perspective, but also
important from an archeological viewpoint. In ref. [1.7] the manner in which environmental
effects enter the calibration phase of the proposed model, in estimating its parameter values, is
discussed. Model parameters change sharply at times, within the archeological horizon.

Figure 3.1. A rough approximation to the North-South 3000-mile arced spatial extent of the
Region under analysis is shown. Each modular unit of the grid’s arced spatial extent
(approximately 200 miles) is about 2.3 in latitude. Length of an arc an Earth’s surface, and not
its chord in either 3-d or projected in 2-d, is recorded. Source: the author from a Google Earth
maps program, available in the public domain.

Obviously, smaller scale resolution maps can be studied, but a finer space-time grain would
require data and information currently unavailable. Whether increasing the space-time
resolution would tend to create dis-equilibrium conditions, more extensive than a grosser
grained model, thus having instability entering the analysis from a structurally biased model; or
grosser dis-aggregated in space-time model would provide higher degree of stability, hence
biasing the model from the other side, are still open methodological issues. In any case, it is within
and among these spatial and temporal units that ancient artifacts moved. Either they moved
within an intra-spatiotemporal unit and remained there till the present-day discovery; or they
moved in an inter-spatiotemporal framework, jumping over cultural and STU-based grid borders,

33
hence requiring some re-examination of the various sites’ historiography to the extent that these
location-specific historiographies are tied to these artifacts’ histories and their spatial-temporal
paths. What type of movement they follow, individually and collectively, at some particular point
in space-time, or over a long-time horizon is something on which the theory might be able to
shed some light, at least in an overall framework, and in a probability context. It is obviously
reasonable to expect that the incidence of intra-spatiotemporal unit movement to be far greater
than that of an inter-spatiotemporal unit(s) motion. However, to what extent and to what specific
degree this is so, remains a question to still be pondered. The probabilities generating capability
of the model put forward in ref. [1.7] is a means to trace the spatiotemporal behavior of artifacts.

Figure 3.2. An approximation to the East-West 3000-mile arced spatial extent of the
archeological Region under analysis in this paper. Each modular unit length of the grid’s spatial
extent, about 200 miles, the length of an arc on the Earth’s surface, is about 4 in longitude.
Source: the author from Google Earth maps program, available in the public domain.

Whether the 200x200 miles, and the 2-century long time span are sufficient to accommodate at
least the major Cultures of the 10--millennium long time frame is of course subject to debate. As
stated already, other spatial-temporal units can be postulated and tested for, within this
theoretical framework. Obviously, spatial-temporal scale effects must be present. Cultures must
enjoy an area spacious enough and lasting long enough to qualify as a major Culture and be

34
detected by the grid, based on the STU size as stated. Smaller in spatial extent and shorter in
duration cultural patches and flows will simply not be detected by this unit. Or, to put it more
formally, any arbitrary unit in general will not be able to detect any patch or flow below its spatial-
temporal resolution. The required minimum spatial-temporal thresholds are subject to
investigation, based on current historical understanding of the many cultures’ longevity and
spatial extent, and their importance as to their spatiotemporal influences, a study which falls
outside the purview of this paper.

Figure 3.3. Cylindrical projection of an approximately spherical (in fact ellipsoidal) Earth
surface. Source of the map: By Peter Mercator - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20168429

Inspection of any STU in the grip would indicate that within it possibly multiple cultures appeared,
some spilled over from a neighboring STU, some entering and others exiting it at some parts of
space-time. Hence, one can come across “pure” STUs, and “mixed” STUs. Such shares constitute
components of STUs that careful, continuous and on-going surveys and archeological research
need to establish. They will always be partial and incomplete, in need of continuous revisions.

Furthermore, each STU - at each time layer - contains within it its own Geology, mountainous
terrain and ocean/sea area, composition that would indicate its inhospitality or suitability for
human residential and employment use (habitation), as well as ease or impediment to land based
or maritime transport, over the ten millennia long time span of this study. Obviously, some of
these STUs remained largely although not entirely vacuous over the entire period of analysis,
whereas some of them were only partially so. Overall, the total land area of the study’s Western
Eurasian and Northern African spatial extent over that 10-millennia long history, is about three
fifths of the entire Region-Horizon, where the rest two fifths are taken by water. In the spatial-
temporal motion of artifacts within that Region-Horizon frame of reference, this aggregate share

35
must be taken into account. Obviously, in some instances, some maritime trade and seafaring
peoples’ final destination could as well be locations at sea, points where shipwrecks would define
a trip’s ending point. The Antikythera mechanism (the paper’s preamble photo) is a vivid
reminder of such accidents at sea in maritime trade.

Figure 3.4. The Peters map, where the meridian goes through Florence, Italy (the usual meridian
goes through Greenwich), so that the Eastern and Western ends transverse the Bering Strait. The
24-hour day is split into 6-hour segments, so that their width corresponds to about 1.5-hour
lengths, and about 215 miles (close to the 200-mile segment, chosen for depicting the width of
an STU in this paper). Source of the map: ref. [3.9].

Contiguity of STUs in space-time is a critical component in the analysis that follows. Spatial
neighborhood, and temporal proximity provide the grounds for some spatial and temporal
iterative process to be set up, whereby an event occurring at time (or space) n+1 depends on
that occurring at time (or space) n. Spatial and/or temporal similarity of what is occurring at some
point p critically depends on what happened at its neighboring point p+/-1, with diminishing
impacts as one moves further out (in space-time). This is a fundamental component of spatial
and temporal diffusion processes in the fields of Spatial and Dynamical Geography.

36
Figure 4. The schematic diagram of a physical space-time unit (STU). Longitudinal and latitudinal
curvatures (arcs) of the STU are shown. Ellipsoidal ABCD is on the Earth’s surface. Ellipsoidal EFGH
is one-time unit of the study’s STU (two centuries). There is a stratigraphic aspect to any STU, in
effect a fourth dimension. The depth of the stratigraphy is picked up by the vertical lines to the
flat plane tangent to the Earth’s surface (pointing towards to Earth’s center) at the four corners
of the STU, A, B, C, and D, which is also the dimension along which time is measured. The
schematic STU accounts for the ellipsoidal shape of the Earth’s volume. Each STU’s barycenter’
projection on the ground falls at the intersection of the AD and BC diagonals. Source: the author.

37
In Figure 4 the diagram of an STU is shown. Horizontally, the longitude (assumed here to be 200
miles in length along the Earth’s surface, hence in arc form) and latitude (also assumed to be 200
miles in length in arc form) base of the unit is provided. Whereas, on the vertical axis, the time
unit (assumed here to extent over two centuries) is depicted. Within the ellipsoidal cuboid
shown, the archeological stratigraphy of the STU can possibly be identified. This stratigraphy is
what is actually compressed and buried in the ground, that the archeologists’ pick-axe unearths
during an excavation. The vertical accumulation of 50 such units (covering the 10-millennium
long study’s time horizon) would contain the entire stratigraphy of the Region (Western Eurasia
and Northern Africa). Distances among STUs are computed among the, projected on the Earth’s
surface, barycenter of each of the (layered over the 50-time period) 11,250 STUs.
Within each stratigraphic layer, this period’s (intra-period) interactions and flows of people and
artifacts occurred. Certain “laws” of stratigraphy have been suggested by Harris, see ref. [2.24].
In such archeological times and horizon, and given the significant geological upheavals some of
these locations of the study Region have experienced, it is not always possible to expect the
Harris laws to be actually met in the turbulent soils of Archeology. Among the stratigraphic layers
is the complex inter-temporal interactions and flows human populations and artifacts have
undertaken and undergone. Identification of these flows, and their complexities is the aim of the
theoretical model that follows. Of course, mixed with these human movement related
complexities, the environmental, climatic, geological complexities must be considered that in
combination produce the geologically highly complicated stratigraphy that archeologists come
across in their digs.
A key factor in the formation of complex stratigraphic layers is the fact that the Earth’s surface,
even for relatively small areas, is never perfectly flat. Spatial heterogeneity involving differential
ground heights contribute to complex stratigraphic layering. Human intervention, as is the case
with archeological structures and artifacts, also significantly impact archeological stratigraphic
layering. It is noted that archeological layering is not necessarily geological layering, where
geological times are encountered and soil homogeneity emerges from processes lasting over
geological time horizons producing far more distinct and homogeneous soil layers although not
in perfect horizontal arrangements due to geological folding. Hence, although in theory the Harris
laws of stratigraphy may be reasonable, in actuality the reality’s Archeology linked complexities
render them of limited value. These issues should not be construed however as totally dismissive
of the basic tenets of certain propositions in the Harris model.
Finally, there’s another major realization one needs to face when dealing with archeological
times and horizons: There is no “long term” dynamic equilibrium in this process, a critical
component in the theoretical model that is put forward by this study to depict both population
stock accumulations and inter- as well as intra-spatial and temporal flows of both populations
and artifacts. And with this note, the analysis now turns to a brief introduction of the theoretical
model put forward in the sequence of this paper and that of ref. [1.7].

38
 Setting up the Theoretical Model
Introduction.
In what follows, the brief outline of a theoretical model is stated, a model more fully described
in reference [1.7]. The model depicts probabilities of artifact flows among the 225 STUs, within
each time unit, as well as among time periods over the discrete 50-time periods included in the
temporal sequence of the study’s horizon. In total, there are 11,250 (225x50) physical space-time
units, which can be envisioned in a 4-d map, each layer (set in the fourth dimension) representing
the STU’s physical attributes within the modular unit shown in Figure 4. Stratigraphy is formed at
each physical spatial ellipsoidal rectangle on the Earth’s surface by compressing the 50 layers of
time periods, so that the last time-wise layer (the boundary between the Neolithic with the
Bronze Age) would be closest to the Earth’s surface.

The basic mathematical spatial-temporal dynamics model used is a variation of the Universal Map
of discrete relative dynamics developed by this author (in collaboration with Michael Sonis, see
ref. [1.6]). The attribute of being “Universal” is from the fundamental properties embedded into
this model, namely that it can deal with both stock accumulations and flows. And also, because
it can accommodate any number of stocks and any number of locations. Moreover, in its relative
dynamics it can incorporate any form of dynamics in state variable space, involving either stock
accumulations or flows. Furthermore, it can run for any number of time periods, under
disequilibrium and possible (multiple) equilibrium conditions, near or far from such dynamic
equilibria. It is to an extent consistent with the Gravity-based Spatial Interaction models, but it
transcends their static nature and produces multiple time frames’ dynamics, which in contrast to
conventional dynamical analysis never reach dynamic equilibrium. The model can accommodate
any number of parameters, with an upper bound on the number of these parameters being a
function of the model’s number of state variables (stocks and locations). Parametric testing can
be carried out during model calibration, so that the model’s sensitivity of performance (on the
state variables) can be experimentally gauged. Hence, the state variables’ phase portrait is
pegged to the specific point in parameter space the model is observed. Parameter values change
(either smoothly or abruptly) in parameter space, thus forcing a shift in the nature of the dynamic
trajectories in the state variables’ phase space. It is not an aggregate model, but a model that
derives a probability measure of an artifact (or individual) flowing among locations over time.
Furthermore, in some aspects of its formulation, it is also a simplified version of the original
Dendrinos-Sonis Map, to be here on referred to as the D-SM, as it significantly reduces the
number of parameters involved and thus needed to be calibrated (i.e., statistically estimated).
The exposition in ref. [1.7] is heavily dependent upon the Mathematic of ref. [1.6], and thus it is
imperative for the reader who wishes to follow the exposition in ref. [1.7] to be familiar with the
work in [1.6]. In the following subsection of the paper, some elaboration on the original D-SM
formalism will be added, remaining at an introductory level, with some exposition on interpreting
the model’s parameters. These slight variations in parameter interpretation contain further
elaboration by this author on the work, since the writing of the book in ref. [1.6].
39
 The model’s basics.
The model’s structure is fundamentally very simple. It is based on the hypothesis-expression that:
P(t+1) = f{P(t)} P(t=0) = P* t=1, 2, …, T (1)

indicating that some variable’s P value at a subsequent (future) time period t+1, P(t+1), is a
function of the value of the variable at the current time period t, P(t). Variable P can depict either
(absolute or relative) single or multiple stock accumulation(s) at different locations; or it can
identify flows of stock(s) among (multiple) locations. In its relative form, it simply identifies a
probability count. The system is governed by this simple deterministic dynamic, with some initial
time period (when t=0) starting value equal to an exogenous to the model parameter P*, and
extends over an exogenously specified time horizon T, the end state of the deterministic
dynamics of condition (1). Expression (1) is the standard model of an iterative process in discrete
time, which involves addictive behavior, whereby how the system behaves at t+1 depends on
how the system behaved at the previous time period t.

According to this simple expression in condition (1), there is no “time delay” effect built into this
simple formulation. Time delays can be incorporated, by suitably modifying the expression in
condition (1), along lines suggested in ref. [1.6]. For instance, one might assume an expression:

P(t+2) = f{P(t), P(t+1)} P(t=0) = P0*, P(t=1) = P1* (2)

where now, both starting (initial) values P0* and P1* are fixed, known and exogenous to the
model’s run. In this discrete-dynamics model, long term equilibrium is reached when at some
time T*, less or equal to T, the following condition is met (actually, more formally stated, when
the iterative process comes within a limit arbitrarily close to the condition that):

P` = P(T*) = P(T*-1) (3)

It is argued here, that in archeological time and within archeological horizons of the type
considered in this paper, condition (3) is never met. A continuum of dynamic disequilibria is the
norm and expected to be the case over the archeological time frames considered here. When the
D-SM model formulation is stated subject to the total stock size (of any stock considered) is
known over the entire set of locations at any particular time period, then the D-SM formalism
picks up distributions of these totals. Hence, its double function: dynamics in probability counts
and relative stock size distributions. This very brief exposition completes the analysis of this
introductory paper on ancient artifacts and their motion in space-time. For a continuation of the
exposition, and the model specifications, the mathematically inclined reader is directed to ref.
[1.7]. A question that needs to be answered is why would an analyst of ancient artifacts and
archeological structures be interested in utilizing such a model. The answer is twofold: firstly,
simply because it supplies insights as to the potential motions of artifacts and their links to the
cultures that made them or used them in their lifecycle. Secondly, it is because utilizing such a
calibrated model could enable one to better gauge both the movement in space-time of artifacts
and populations as well as their interconnectivity in regards to their accumulations in space-time.
40
 Conclusions
In this paper, which is the first in a sequence of two, the background was set to formulate a
theoretical mathematical model to describe the flow in space-time of ancient artifacts. That flow
could be the result of either trade, or the outcome of population stocks’ motion carrying with
them artifacts necessary in their spatial migrations. Hence, it is a model that simulates and
replicates the motion and accumulation of both artifacts and populations in space-time. The
model was framed within what was defined as “archeological time”, a period spanning about ten
millennia past the Upper Paleolithic, and covering a Region spanning Western Eurasia and
Northern Africa. A number of fields, from Economics and the Spatial Sciences, were employed in
deriving the basic processes underlying a complex evolutionary process, involving the many
phase transitions ancient artifacts seem to have undergone in their life cycles.
An attempt was also made to establish the spatial and temporal unit of analysis, the STUs, and
analyze the implications of its size in space-time. Use of maps from Cartography and Physical
Geography were made to schematically draw the modular unit of this model, an eight-million
square miles-years (or 8x10^6-SMY). This spatiotemporal modulus is overlaid on a grid spanning
9x10^10-SMYs. Specific magnitudes of each constituent unit (spatial and temporal) can be tested
as to how sensitive or robust the results of the model’s calibration of its parameters is, possibly
to indicate (at a later phase of the analysis) appropriate modifications. The modulus and expanse
of the grid are only suggestive at this stage. The theoretical model, its formalism, state variables
and parameters, are presented in the sequel paper, ref. [1.7]. How the model is to be calibrated,
and in effect its empirical verification, must be carried out in a follow up effort, in a third paper
which must contain a significant attempt to collect a variety of data from a variety of sources
(archeological and genetic) sites and time periods. This is certainly an ambitious research effort
and hence at this stage can only be considered as a suggested research program.
Spatial and temporal movement of ancient artifacts is a condition that has not been extensively
analyzed in the archeological literature. Provenance of mobile ancient artifacts has not
preoccupied archeologists from an analytical viewpoint. Moreover, this type of analysis might
weaken the many pronouncements archeologists have made on the historiography of both
immobile structures and mobile artifacts, or at least question the veracity of some of these
pronouncements. Empirical evidence might be scarce to specifically draw conclusions from such
apparent and largely ubiquitous motion in the life cycle of ancient artifacts. Nonetheless, the
importance of recognizing the likely long-term duration of spatial and temporal movements by
mobile artifacts can’t be understated. This is particularly the case when the dating and associated
historiography, not only of these artifacts, is the sought-after outcome, but (and possibly more
importantly) the underlying historiography of the associated immobile structures (where these
artifacts were found by archeologists) is sought.

An example highlighting the importance of determining an artifact’s complete historiography and

its voyage in space-time as it underwent possibly numerous phase transitions in its life cycle

41
before found buried where archeologists recently discovered is the ceramic sherd of Figure B
from the El-Portalon de Cueva Mayor site, in Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos – at the Northern
Plateau of the Basque Region of the Iberian Peninsula, in present day Spain. The archeologists
excavating the site linked this (so called “ranifrom”) motif to similar motifs found in the Apennine
Peninsula and in Central Europe. Finding such a Neolithic Era sherd at that location raises of
course numerous questions, questions that touch on the very reasons why the suggested
research of this paper (and that in ref. [1.7]) is necessary.

Figure B. An approximately 4-centimeter long (according to the scale at right) sherd from a
Neolithic ceramic vessel found at the El-Portalon de Cueva Mayor site, in Sierra de Atapuerca,
Burgos at the Northern Plateau of the Basque Region of the Iberian Peninsula in present day
Spain. The archeologists excavating the site linked this (so called “ranifrom”) motif to similar
motifs found in the Apennine Peninsula and in Central Europe. Source of the photo: ref. [3.10].
Credit: A. Alday and J. M. Road in ref. [2.25].

42
The archeologists were not able to provide information on a host of issues, such as the following:
what was approximate date this artifact (vessel) was made; who made it; whether the vessel was
made locally, or was it transported there from elsewhere and by whom; whether, if made locally,
and whoever was the maker, where did the maker come from, was (s)he a local artist or an artist
that had migrated (temporarily or permanently) there; where did this motif originate; how did
ceramic vessel fragment; how come and the rest of the fragments were not found next to this
particular sherd. These are some of the questions one may have on this archeological item, along
with a number of others related to the obviously complex movement of either the motif
(information), people and/or the various cultures this particular vessel belonged to and was used
by, as they carried it with them over its life span. In other words, one may wish to know the
complete historiography of the artifact. The artifact of Figure B may not be as well-known,
glamorous, or consequential as the artifact shown in the paper’s preamble photo, the
Antikythera mechanism. It is however as important in the quest to derive a theoretical framework
and a model for assisting the archeologist in productively linking artifacts to locations and
immobile structures, and in properly deriving and tracing historiographies of items under the
archeologists’ domain. This task might neither be easy nor unequivocal, but it certainly is
important, as it raises questions of an evolutionary type which, at least in theory if not yet and at
this stage in practice, may offer insights into their life cycles. It is precisely these types of
questions, if at all possible to fully and exhaustively address, that this paper was set up to tackle.
In this paper, three different spaces were presented and analyzed, all involving explicitly the time
dimension. First is the actual physical space on the ellipsoidal form of the Earth’s surface, on
which the Region of analysis (the archeological landscape) was defined. This is the landscape of
the Western Eurasia and Northern Africa, as it evolved over the archeological horizon of ten
millennia in the post-Upper Paleolithic and pre-Bronze Age archeological period. In that spatial
extent, the dynamical behavior of the various cultures that inhabited that archeological
landscape in terms of their populations and artifacts and their spatial-temporal accumulations
and flows were modeled in theory, so that nonlinear dynamics in phase space for these state
variables can be recorded and simulated. These state variable dynamics occur at some particular
set of values of the theoretical mathematical model suggested (and to be more fully expanded in
the sequel to this paper, ref. [1.7]). However, parameters do change as well in parameter space,
resulting in shifts in the dynamic paths of state variables in their phase space.

How these three types of dynamics are integrated into the theoretical mathematical model in a
coherent manner, and the calibration requirements form the tasks to be carried out in the sequel
to this paper, ref. [1.7]. The theoretical mathematical model put forward will enable the analyst
to answer a number of central questions, when an artifact is found during any archeological
excavation. In all likelihood, from where did this artifact come at a specific location in space-time?
When and where was it made? How many owners did it have? In turn, these answers may further
assist the analyst to place the artifact (and the architectural-archeological structure associated
with it) in its proper spatial-temporal context and cultural milieu.

43
 References

Author’s work

[1.1] Dimitrios S. Dendrinos, April 22, 2016, “Alexander’s Network of Cities and their Dynamics”,
academia.edu The paper is found here:

https://www.academia.edu/24667299/Alexanders_Network_of_Cities_and_their_Dynamics
]1.2] Dimitrios S. Dendrinos, November 15, 2016, “In the Shadows of Carnac’ Le Menec Stones:
A Neolithic Proto Supercomputer”, academia.edu The paper is found here:
https://www.academia.edu/30164088/In_the_Shadows_of_Carnacs_Le_Menec_Stones_A_Ne
olithic_proto_supercomputer
[1.3] Dimitrios S. Dendrinos, September 10, 2016, “From Newgrange to Stonehenge: Monuments
to a Bull Cult and Origins of Innovation”, academia.edu The paper is found here:
https://www.academia.edu/28393947/From_Newgrange_to_Stonehenge_Monuments_to_a_B
ull_Cult_and_Origins_of_Innovation
[1.4] Dimitrios S. Dendrinos, January 10, 2016, “On the Tumulus at Amphipolis. Update #3”,
academia.edu The paper is found here:
https://www.academia.edu/20142815/On_the_Tumulus_at_Amphipolis._Update_3
[1.5] Dimitrios S. Dendrinos, May 14, 2017, “Nefertiti’s Bust and Dynamical Geometry”,
academia.edu The paper is found here:
https://www.academia.edu/33039241/Nefertitis_Bust_and_Dynamical_Geometry

[1.6] Dimitrios S. Dendrinos, Michael Sonis, 1990, Chaos and Socio-Spatial Dynamics, Applied
Mathematical Sciences Volume 86, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

[1.7] Dimitrios S. Dendrinos, February 10, 2018, “On Ancient Artifacts II: An Application of the
Universal Map of Discrete Spatial Relative Dynamics in Archeological Time”, academia.edu. The
paper is found here: https://kansas.academia.edu/DimitriosDendrinos

Work by others
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Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
[2.3] Walter Isard, 1875, Introduction to Regional Science, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.

44
[2.4] David M. Smith, 1971, Industrial Location; An Economic Geographic Analysis, John Wiley &
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Nations/dp/0226763749/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1515121260&sr=8-
8&keywords=the+wealth+of+nations
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London.
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translated, and with an Introduction by Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells, Penguin Books Ltd,
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[2.15] John Maynard Keynes, 1923, A Tract on Monetary Reform, McMillan, London.

[2.16] George Nicolis, Ilya Prigogine, 1977, Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems, John
Wiley & Sons, New York.

[2.17] Alan G. Wilson, 1970, Entropy in urban and regional modelling, Pion, London.
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University Press, Boston.

45
[2.19] Edward N. Lorenz, 1963, “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow”, Journal of the Atmospheric
Sciences, Vol.20, pp: 130-141. The paper is available here:
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0469%281963%29020%3C0130%3ADNF%3E2.0.CO%3B2
[2.20] J. Barkley Rosser Jr, 1991, From Catastrophe to Chaos; A General Theory of Economic
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[2.21] Francisco Luca, 1999, “Nikolai Kondratieff and the Early Consensus and Dissensions about
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[2.24] Edward Harris, 1989, Principles of Archeological Stratigraphy, Academic Press, London.
[2.25] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618217307954

Sources of Figures/Maps
[3.1] http://humansarefree.com/2015/07/new-analysis-of-antikythera-mechanism.html

[3.2] http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/catalhuyuk.html
[3.3] http://www.focusmm.com.au/civcty/cathyk08.htm
[3.4] http://dan.romascanu.net/tag/megalithic-temples-in-malta/
[3.5] http://web.infinito.it/utenti/m/malta_mega_temples/stattuet/statt/anistat/sleeping.html
[3.6] https://fineartamerica.com/featured/germany-berlin-nefertiti-bust-everett.html

[3.7] https://www.eupedia.com/europe/neolithic_europe_map.shtml
[3.8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
[3.9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall–Peters_projection
[3.10] https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2018/01/early-neolithic-pottery-
fragment-with.html#fH0mFQpSPpfu9hV4.97

46
 Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions made to his work by all his Facebook friends,
and especially by the members of his current twelve groups the author has created and is
administering on Facebook. Their posts and comments have inspired him in his research over the
past three years, since he opened his Facebook account. Further, this author is indebted to his
co-workers over the years he was active in academia, Henry Mullally and Michael Sonis.
But most important and dear to this author has been the 22+ years of encouragement and
support he has received from his wife Catherine and their daughters Daphne-Iris and Alexia-
Artemis. For their continuing support, assistance, encouragement and understanding for all those
long hours he allotted doing research, when he could have shared his time with them, this author
will always be deeply appreciative and grateful.

Notice on Legal Copyrights

© The author, Dimitrios S. Dendrinos retains full legal copyrights to the contents of this paper.
Figures have their own source and copyright, as cited in the text. Reproduction in any form, of
parts or the whole of this paper’s narrative is prohibited without the explicit and written
permission and consent from the author, Dimitrios S. Dendrinos.

47

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