MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W2139207781

Archaeological Geology of the World's First Emerald Mine

2004· article· en· W2139207781 on OpenAlexvenueaboutno aff
James A. Harrell

Bibliographic record

VenueGeoscience Canada · 2004
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEarth and Planetary Sciences
TopicMineralogy and Gemology Studies
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsEmeraldWadiGeologyArchaeologyPegmatiteSchistGeochemistryGeographyMetamorphic rockMineralogy
DOInot available

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Emerald, a green transparent variety of beryl, was one of the most highly prized gemstones in antiquity. The earliest known emerald mine is located in the mountain valley of Wadi Sikait in Egypt's Eastern Desert, where mining probably began toward the end of the Ptolemaic period in the first century BC. Most of the mining activity, however, dates to the Roman and Byzantine periods, from the late first century BC through the sixth century AD. The Romans referred to emerald as smaragdus and named the Sikait region Mons Smaragdus or Emerald Mountain. An archaeological geology survey of Wadi Sikait was undertaken for the purpose of mapping the distribution of ancient mine workings, deducing the ancient mining methods, and describing the geological occurrence of emerald. It was found that emerald and other green beryls occur within the contact zone between phlogopite schist and intrusive quartz and pegmatite veins. The workings, which were excavated in the softer phlogopite schist with flat-edged chisels and pointed picks, are mostly shallow, open-cut trenches that follow the quartz/ pegmatite veins. Some workings continue as much as 100 m underground and are still largely unexplored. It is noteworthy that the geological occurrence of beryl in Wadi Sikait, the world's oldest emerald mine, is essentially the same as for the world's newest emerald discovery at Regal Ridge in Canada's Yukon Territory. RESUME L'emeraude qui est une variete de beryl vert transparent, etait l'une des pierres precieuses les plus prisees dans l'Antiquite. La plus vieille mine d'emeraude connue est situee dans la vallee de montagne de Wadi Sikait dans le desert oriental de l'Egypte, ou l'extraction a probablement debutee vers la fin de la periode ptolemaique durantle premier siecle A.C. Cependant, le gros des travaux d'extraction date des periodes romaines et byzantines, de la fin du premier siecle avant J.C. jusqu'au sixieme siecle apres J.C. Les Romains utilisaient le mot smaragdus pour designer l'emeraude et designait la region de Sikait par l'expression Mons Smaragdus ou la montagne d'emeraude. Une etude de geologie archeologique de Wadi Sikait a ete entreprise dans le but de cartographier les anciens sites d'extraction, d'en deduire les anciennes methodes d'extraction utilisees et de circonscrire la distribution des gisements d'emeraude. On a decouvert que les gisements d'emeraude et autres beryls verts sont localises dans la zone de contact separant une zone de schistes a phlogopite et de veines intrusives de quartz, d'une zone de pegmatites. Les excavations pratiquees dans la formation plus tendre du schiste a phlogopite a l'aide de ciseaux a pointe aplatie et de pics pointus, sont peu profondes pour la plupart, et forment des tranchees a ciel ouvert qui longent les zones de veines de quartz et de pegmatites. Certaines d'entre-elles qui se prolongent en soussol jusqu'a 100 m de profondeur sont peu explorees. Il est interessant de noter que le cadre geologique du beryl de Wadi Sikait, la plus vieille mine d'emeraude au monde, est essentiellement le meme que celui du plus recent gisement decouvert a Regal Ridge dans les Territoires du Yukon au Canada.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.036
Threshold uncertainty score0.072

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.004
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.009
GPT teacher head0.184
Teacher spread0.174 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations24
Published2004
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueGeoscience CanadaSame topicMineralogy and Gemology StudiesFrench-language works237,207