The notion of mechanical reproduction was made famous by Walter Benjamin in a 1936 essay. Benjamin was concerned with modern developments; in this paper I argue that a shift toward pervasive repetitiveness in work and thus a form of mechanical reproduction was already introduced in the Uruk period (4th millennium BCE) in southern Mesopotamia. I consider the ways in which work was conceptualized and structured in Uruk times, and by extension how innovations in the realm of work affected other spheres of life. My examination includes the production and use of pottery, buildings and their constituent mudbricks, durable imagery involving anthropomorphic depictions, and textiles.

Consumer societies position innovation in a framework that essentializes the new. The assumed need for innovative technologies, life-styles and fashion is based on an internalized reversal of the relationship between ‘needs’ and ‘motives’. Primary needs are replaced by the desire for the new. The implicit assumption about consumers’ self-understanding relates to their interest in the new and their willingness to be informed about novelties. However, ethnographies of quotidian handling of innovation show the importance of reliable conduct. The readiness ‘to learn new things’ is limited. Innovation depends less on the degree of novelty than on the context in which it occurs.

This paper analyzes the specific conditions of the innovation of the prehistoric wheeled vehicle innovation according to affordance and Eigensinn of this new technology. The use of wheeled vehicles is a social practice that results from the interests and capabilities of their users, but also from their technical affordances and eigensinn . Wheeled vehicles/wagons expand and restrict their users’ potentialities of action. The realization of possibilities of action is linked to specific interests and technical requirements. Today, wheeled vehicles are the symbol of mobility. However, this is an affordance that was realized only late in history and was not the starting point of this particular innovation.

This paper deals with the introduction of iron technology in Northern Central Europe and discusses two major aspects. On the one hand, it asks to what extent we are able to trace the process of the introduction of iron and how it might have taken place. On the other hand, intended and unintended consequences of the introduction of this new technology are investigated. Can we spot ‘collateral processes’ that accompany the introduction of iron? To what extent do these processes enable such innovation, are an integral part of it, or are triggered by it?

In the second half of the 18th Century BCE Yarim-Lim of Alalakh gave instructions to decorate his palace with wall paintings. Instead of following the inner-Syrian or ‘Mesopotamian’ tradition of al secco painting on dark mud plaster, he decided in favor of a technical and iconographical innovation known from the Aegean, a bright, shiny lime plaster with a griffin as a depiction. Later, similar decorations appeared in palaces and houses in Syria and beyond. My paper analyzes why this technical and social innovation was successful within the local life world. Secondly, it takes a closer look at the impact of the murals by exploring the use and meaning of Aegean-related motifs in the following centuries and the production of a Levantine Aegeanness in different media of expression.

This paper discusses the underdetermined changes brought about by the introduction of extractive metallurgy in the southern Levant. It takes a long-term-perspective. The author sums up current perspectives with regard to a modified chronology based on calibrated radiocarbon dates before re-evaluating the interconnections between technical innovation and social change. Arguments in favor and against a Schivelbuschian view on extractive copper metallurgy are discussed as well as a variety of social fields in which changes can be detected.

The neolithization of Northeastern Africa is currently studied in terms of the successful in-corporation of domesticates as an active response to climatic changes, by carefully dividing between pre-pastoral and pastoral modes of life or wild and domestic species, respectively. However, it becomes obvious that interest in domesticates is a long-term commitment to other species, given that numerous intended and unintended consequences arose from this particular change in human-environmental relations. According to Gabriel Tarde, innovation can be studied as an act of ‘imitation’ that produces ‘variation’. This would defocus from the subject position of initiators of innovations and rather stress other agents in this process, both human and non-human.

This paper analyzes ‘innovation’ as a discursive, narrative and dramatized construction with a strong tendency towards reification. I review examples, arguing for an understanding of innovation that moves away from new physical or epistemic things, to advocate instead a discourse-critical, practice-centered and contextualized understanding of innovations. Two cases from ancient Mesopotamia illustrate my argument. The first is found in every treatise on world historical changes: the introduction of writing. The second is a previously under-appreciated and unperceived innovation for which there is even no clear expression: the emergence of a ‘documentary gaze’. I elucidate its original context with pictorial evidence and describe the political dimensions surrounding this innovation.

In this paper we propose a sociological concept of innovation capable of transcending the limitations faced by the approaches of common theories of action. The concept was formu- lated by Ulrich Oevermann and is based upon Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority. We apply this concept to archaeological data, using the example of Neolithic copper metal- lurgy in central Europe, and discuss the importance of analyzing innovations that failed to materialize even though they might have been ”in the air” at the time. The concept sketched here enables the scientific study of such a phenomenon.

In the second half of the second millennium BC, many areas of Western Eurasia witnessed the return to a settled lifestyle after a long epoch of mobile life. Between the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and neighbouring mountains, a new type of settlements arose. Particular in the Caucasian mountains an architectural tradition emerged that involved the permanent building material stone for the construction of very sophisticated multifunctional build- ings. Stone architecture probably was not invented in the Caucasus, but the innovation once adopted fell on fruitful ground. Over nearly one thousand years of recurring leaps of innovations can be followed. This article discusses the dialectics of these innovative leaps as well as between the development of new technical solutions and new social demands in building as well as dwelling.