I originally misread ‘Australian’ as ‘Austrian’, and only realised after seeing ‘brumbies’. @EDC1 may have done the same.
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I did indeed. And have also had to look up brumbies after the fact!
I did understand endogenous to to be referring to peoples already living in the locale, as opposed to a new group coming into the land. I think that was a reasonable understanding of what you said. You are still arguing there is no need to suggest an external people group, with new behaviours, moving into the area at a certain time. That is being put forth as a real possibility. It remains a possibility even if you think it is improbable. You should know Occam’s Razor doesnt always fit with reality.
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“Endogenous” is not a synonym of “indigenous”.
OED defines “endogenous” as “growing from within”. In this context, I meant an “endogenous explanation” to be one “growing from within” the known facts of a scenario. An “exogenous explanation” would be one that would have to hypothesise new facts.
Correct.
That was never my point.
My point is that the facts can be explained without the introduction of “an external people group”, therefore these facts fail to distinguish between their absense and presence. Therefore these facts do not “tend to prove or disprove” either conclusion (per the definition of “evidence”). Therefore these facts are not evidence for either conclusion.
Note that I said “either conclusion” – these facts are no more evidence against the arrival of “an external people group” than for it.
And I am in fact not saying that the arrival of “an external people group” simpliciter is “improbable”. I’m sure that this happened frequently – though in most cases we would not have evidence supporting the entry of a particular group, or even of the particular group’s identity.
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An interesting fact is that, in spite of the similarity of these two countries’ names, they come from very different, and in fact contradictory, roots.
Australia comes from the Latin Terra Australis – southern land.
Austria comes from the German Ostmark, eastern march, as it was originally the eastern “march” (border territory) of first the Frankish Empire, then of East Francia, and then of Bavaria.
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Yet related!
I think that you have misunderstood the Occam’s Razor.
To clarify my point, I copy a sentence from wikipedia:
" razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both hypotheses have equal explanatory power, one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions"
In this case, we should speak of the number of assumptions, rather than people groups. If a local people group changes its culture, that is an assumption, as is the arrival of new people with a new culture. Then we are in a situation where we compare the probability of one assumption with the probability of another assumption - an equal number of assumptions that need an explanation.
In addition, the alternative hypotheses make somewhat different predictions, which speaks against using Occam’s Razor to this comparison. Rather, we should compare the predictions based on the hypotheses and try to find out which one makes predictions that are closer to the observations.
Gradualism or catastrophism. What’s more likely? Indigenous pastoralist tent dwelling nomads settling down in houses? Or an invasion. Of settlers?
Except that you have not demonstrated a change in culture. As I quoted before:
Yet, the data collected demonstrate that dichotomy in pig consumption did occur – between sites located in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the Iron Age IIB.
What we are looking at would therefore seem to be differences/variations within a culture.
Or are you claiming that the northern kingdom of Israel wasn’t Hebrew?
Except that your hypothesis would appear to be unfalsifiable. You claim that pork consumption as an indicator of Hebrew vs non-Hebrew, but then when you are presented with evidence of Hebrew pork-consumption, you claim backsliding – a claim almost perfectly analogous to the infamous No true Scotsman fallacy.
“No true Hebrew would eat pork.” 
This is made further problematical by an apparent lack of extra-biblical confirmation on exactly when the prohibition came into effect.
That is an assumption. Counts as one element in the sense that Occam’s Razor inspects hypotheses.
What kind of evidence do you have for that claim?
Because it’s simpler.
I would say that it is not. Arrival of a group of new people with a new culture, whoever they were, is a simpler explanation than trying to explain why a local ANE culture changed in the way suggested by the archeological findings.
Claiming that there was that much variation within a culture is a rather strong assumption. I would like to see any evidence supporting such a claim. It is possible that one region had smaller groups of people with differing cultures but that is not the same as claiming that they were part of the same culture.
Wikipedia defines culture as:
" Culture is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitudes, and habits of the individuals in these groups."
Based on that definition and the archeological findings, it seems that there were at least two different cultures in that region. The cities along the trade routes probably included people from additional cultures, Egyptian and others.
Anyhow, the archeological data seems to be inconclusive in the sense that it does not clearly exclude any of the competing hypotheses. We just need to wait for more data.
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So where did they come from? When? And settled immediately? In an empty fertile land… without warfare. We’ve heard that before… in this exact region. Oooh, and they would have been nomads too, not starving refugees. What is simpler? Local or remote migratory nomads?
The evidence that I already gave you:
Yet, the data collected demonstrate that dichotomy in pig consumption did occur – between sites located in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the Iron Age IIB.
Hence my question:
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I did not write about Iron Age, I discussed the archeological findings during Bronze Ages in the area that has been called Canaan.
My interpretation about the data is that there happened a cultural change so that the culture became different in the late bronze age compared to the ages before it. That change seemed to happen in mainly rural highlands, their neighbouring areas and at least part of Judea but apparently not in the largest lowland cities with military troops, Egyptian or other strong players. The culture did not either change in the region controlled by Philistineans during the late bronze age.
What caused this cultural change is a matter of speculation.
You seem to think that there did not even happen any change in the culture, that it was just variation within a culture. If so, then we interpret the data in different ways.
My interpretation fits to the assumption that one of the cultures in the late bronze age was Israelites but the archeological data does not prove this assumption - there are only indirect hints of a cultural change (pig bones, ceramics) that have been called ‘markers’.
I am not an expert of the topic so I do not know what else (‘markers’ of culture) have been found in the archeological excavations. I would be interested to learn about any signs of worship practices from the excavation sites or other signs of local culture that did or did not change.
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I would suggest they are evidence, but there may be different explanations for that evidence. In any court case juries have to examine the evidence presented by the prosecution and decide if that evidence leads them to conclude the accused did the deed per the prosecution, or whether another conclusion could be reasonably drawn.
In real life situations it is unwise to use always Occam’s Razor as the fallback position. The medical profession has thankfully woken up to this. I wonder how many lives have been saved due to this change of mindset…
The archaeological findings - pig bones and ceramics - during the Bronze Age in Canaan suggest a regional cultural shift, possibly tied to emerging Israelite identity. There were only 30 settlements in the hill country.
I wonder what evidence you have.
What data? You have presented none, and neither has Dizon.
All we have is hearsay, not evidence. Dizon makes claims about the “Late Bronze Age” but his cited source for that claim, “Hess, Klingbeil and Ray 2008:100”, jumps straight from the Middle Bronze to the Iron Age.
Addendum: have you read “Hess, Klingbeil and Ray 2008:100”? I have it open in front of me.
Further addendum: I would also note that “Hess, Klingbeil and Ray 2008:100” itself presents no data, but merely summarises the interpretations and conclusions of earlier papers (that themselves may or may not present data, and may likewise base their interpretations on data contained in earlier work).
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And I would suggest, with the dictionary definition to back it up, that facts only become evidence when they “tend to prove or disprove any conclusion.”
And a frequently made interjection, during this process is “objection – relevance”* – facts are only admissible as evidence when it can be shown that they are relevant, i.e. they “tend to prove or disprove [a] conclusion” under adjudication.
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