Life, Death and Dining in Early Byzantine Sicily: UBC Excavations at Kaukana, 2008-2010
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Excavations in 2008-2010 near Punta Secca (RG), Sicily, have explored a building ("Building 6") in a late antique village first identified during the 1960s and claimed as the Kaukana of the sources. This paper provides an interim report of those excavations, which revealed seven phases of activity condensed into a comparatively short period, ca. AD 580/600-ca. 650. Domestic occupation in the two main rooms of the house was short-lived. Finds unsurprisingly indicate culture contact with Africa and with the eastern Mediterranean, including Asia Minor and Egypt. An African lamp may show the world's earliest depiction of a backgammon board. Another curious object (scoop or bee-smoker?) is also discussed. The most important discovery was that of a tombe privilégiée of ca. AD 625/630, which contained the bodies of a pregnant woman aged about 25 and of her daughter aged about four. Their Christian faith is suggested by a grave slab inscribed "holy" three times. A libation hole, a bench for banqueting, a table for offerings, and hearths for cooking (an assemblage unique in Sicily), show that periodic feasting took place in memory of the dead. The medical condition of the woman, who suffered from atretic cephalocele, may explain why she and her daughter were afforded such exceptional treatment in death and in such an exceptional location. Les fouilles menées en 2008-2010 près de Punta Secca (RG) en Sicile se sont concentrées sur une maison située dans un village de l'Antiquité tardive qui a été identifié, depuis sa découverte dans les années 60, comme étant la Kaukana des sources littéraires. Cet article est le rapport provisoire de ces fouilles qui ont permis d'identifier sept phases d'activité condensées dans une courte période de quelque 50-70 ans, soit de 580/600 à 650 ap. J.-C. L'occupation domestique des deux pièces principales de la maison a été de courte durée. Le matériel découvert témoigne des contacts, par ailleurs bien attestés, avec l'Afrique et la Méditerranée orientale, dont l'Asie Mineure et l'Égypte. Une lampe africaine est apparemment décorée de la plus ancienne représentation connue d'une planche de backgammon. Un autre objet assez curieux pourrait être identifié comme une cuiller ou un enfumoir. Mais la découverte la plus remarquable a été celle d'une tombe privilégiée, qui daterait de 625/630, contenant les restes d'une femme enceinte d'environ 25 ans et de sa fille d'environ 4 ans. Le remploi d'une stèle sur laquelle le mot « saint » est inscrit trois fois suggère qu'il s'agit d'une sépulture chrétienne. Un orifice pour les libations, un banc pour les banquets, une table pour les offrandes et des foyers pour la cuisson (un assemblage unique en Sicile) indiquent que l'on y festoyait périodiquement en leur mémoire. L'état physique de la femme, qui souffrait de céphalocèle atrétique, pourrait expliquer qu'elle et sa fille aient reçu une sépulture et des rituels hors du commun.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".