The organization of microcore technology in the Canadian southern interior plateau
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to construct and test a model of the organization of microcore technology, a standardized core technology, within the subsistence-settlement system of prehistoric, semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers. The study of technological organization involves investigation of why a society selects particular tool designs, and how it structures the manufacture, use, maintenance and discard of tools and associated debitage across the landscape. The model tested here associates the use of microcore technology with a design for a maintainable and transportable tool assemblage which conserves lithic material, and with a regional distribution focused on residential camps as the locus of microcore manufacture and microblade production and use. The model is tested through a comparative case study of archaeological tools and debitage from microlithic and non-microlithic sites in two upland valleys in the British Columbia Southern Interior Plateau. Research hypotheses and corresponding test implications are evaluated with data and analyses relating to core reduction and tool production stages, to tool use, and to activity area patterning within the sites. Results of hypothesis testing indicate that the model only partially explains the role of this particular standardized core technology in the study areas. Microcore technology is found to be associated with high residential and logistical mobility; a transportable, expediently-used tool assemblage; and the conservation of a specific raw material in one valley. Thus, this research proposes that microcore technology was a standardized technology which was variable in design goals and distribution, even within the same geographically and ethnographically defined region.
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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 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 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".