Bone tools, ornaments and other unusual objects during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Italy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The arrival of Modern Humans (MHs) in Europe between 50 ka and 36 ka coincides with significant changes in human behaviour, regarding the production of tools, the exploitation of resources and the systematic use of ornaments and colouring substances. The emergence of the so-called modern behaviours is usually associated with MHs, although in these last decades findings relating to symbolic thinking of pre-Sapiens groups have been claimed. In this paper we present a synthesis of the Italian evidence concerning bone manufacturing and the use of ornaments and pigments in the time span encompassing the demise of Neandertals and their replacement by MHs. Current data show that Mousterian bone tools are mostly obtained from bone fragments used as is. Conversely an organized production of fine shaped bone tools is characteristic of the Uluzzian and the Protoaurignacian, when the complexity inherent in the manufacturing processes suggests that bone artefacts are not to be considered as expedient resources. Some traces of symbolic activities are associated to Neandertals in Northern Italy. Ornaments (mostly tusk shells) and pigments used for decorative purposes are well recorded during the Uluzzian. Their features and distribution witness to an intriguing cultural homogeneity within this technocomplex. The Protoaurignacian is characterized by a wider archaeological evidence, consisting of personal ornaments (mostly pierced gastropods), pigments and artistic items.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| 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".