Chalcolithic superblades from Bulgaria: a case study of a recently found hoard from Sushina
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Bulgarian Chalcolithic period (and especially its final phase) is widely known for its striking social differentiation, evidenced by remarkable examples of copper and gold technology, as well as exceptional flint-knapping techniques. Superblades (over 25 cm long) are found mainly in mortuary contexts (as burial grave-goods) and hoards coming from domestic contexts and interpreted as reserves of precious items kept for future use. The superblades represent products of a sophisticated debitage technique – pressure using a lever or a crutch in standing position). The reconstruction of the skills for superblade removal requires very detailed and meticulous analysis of a spectrum of particular stigmata. The functional interpretation of the blades needs careful use-wear observations and expertise. Both analytical procedures have been applied to a hoard of 11 remarkably well-preserved superblades from a hoard discovered in the Chalcolithic tell near the village of Sushina in northern Bulgaria. This paper offers a detailed description, analysis and interpretation of the blades from this hoard in the context of the Balkan networks of materials and symbols during the Golden 5th millennium BC.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 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".