Early metal use and crematory practices in the American Southeast
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Long-distance exchange of copper objects during the Archaic Period (ca. 8000-3000 cal B.P.) is a bellwether of emergent social complexity in the Eastern Woodlands. Originating from the Great Lakes, the Canadian Maritimes, and the Appalachian Mountains, Archaic-age copper is found in significant amounts as far south as Tennessee and in isolated pockets at major trade centers in Louisiana but is absent from most of the southeastern United States. Here we report the discovery of a copper band found with the cremated remains of at least seven individuals buried in the direct center of a Late Archaic shell ring located in coastal Georgia. Late Archaic shell rings are massive circular middens thought to be constructed, in part, during large-scale ritual gatherings and feasting events. The exotic copper and cremated remains are unique in coastal South Carolina and Georgia where Archaic-age cremations are conspicuously absent and no other Archaic copper objects have been reported. Elemental data produced through laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry shows the copper originated from the Great Lakes, effectively extending Archaic copper exchange almost 1,000 km beyond its traditional boundaries. Similarities in mortuary practices and the presence of copper originating from the Great Lakes reveal the presence of long-distance exchange relations spanning vast portions of the eastern United States and suggest an unexpected level of societal complexity at shell ring localities. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that elite actors solidified their positions through ritual gatherings and the long-distance exchange of exotic objects during the Archaic.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".