Bibliographic record
Abstract
Understanding the classification of objects is important for discerning their cultural significance. However, there has been very limited work on modern pottery classification systems of Bantu speakers in southern Africa. The range of ceramic vessels used in Zulu society since the nineteenth century is described in this paper to evaluate the principles producers and consumers use to distinguish different categories of pottery containers and understand why ceramics continue to be produced despite a collapse in the ceramic repertoire 190 years ago. Archaeologists have long utilised the variables of vessel shape, size, and decoration to monitor inter-assemblage variation to infer chronology and symbolise concepts of group relatedness. The Zulu data reaffirm the importance of considering vessel shape and size in deriving a functional classification and demonstrate how certain surface treatments express messages about identity, status, protection, mystification, and appropriate contexts for vessel use. Thus, the Zulu case provides a significant behavioural rationale for including surface treatment as part of a functional classification. It is suggested that the enduring symbolic and ritual significance of pottery in Zulu society and the low capital investment required for pottery-making aid in perpetuating the craft.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".