Spherulites and Aspiring Elites: The Identification, Distribution, and Consumption of Giali Obsidian (Dodecanese, Greece)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper details the results of a survey of the obsidian sources on the island of Giali in the Dodecanese, Greece, together with a review of these raw materials’ use from the Mesolithic to the Late Bronze Age (ninth to second millennium Cal bc). Elemental characterization of 76 geological samples from 11 sampling locations demonstrates the existence of two geochemically distinct sources, termed ‘Giali A’, and ‘Giali B’. The latter material, available in small cobble form on the island’s southwestern half, seems to have only been exploited by local residents during the Final Neolithic (fourth millennium Cal bc). In contrast, Giali A obsidian comprises a distinctive white-spotted raw material, available in large boulders on the northeastern half of Giali, whose use changed significantly over time. During the Mesolithic to later Neolithic it was mainly used for flake-based tool-production by local Dodecanesian populations. Further away, handfuls of Giali A obsidian are documented from Early Neolithic to Early Bronze Age sites in Crete, the Cyclades, and western Anatolia. The distribution of this material is likely indicative of population movement, and regional socio-economic interaction more generally, rather than a significant desire for, and trade of, the material itself. This changed in the Middle Bronze Age (second millennium Cal bc), when Giali A obsidian was reconceptualized as a valued raw material, and used by Cretan palace-based lapidaries to make prestige goods. This radical shift in traditions of consumption resulted from Cretan factions appropriating Anatolian and Egyptian elite value regimes and craft practices as a means of creating new means of social distinction within a larger Eastern Mediterranean political arena.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".