The acoustics of ancient catacombs in Southern Italy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The catacombs, burial sites for early Christians, were constructed during the Roman Empire until the Christian religion was recognized in 313 AD. The catacombs were cementeries, which were organized according to precise rules and were dug into the ground on several levels, to occupy as little space as possible. The catacombs became places of worship as martyrs were buried in them. The catacombs were then abandoned with the barbarian invasions and the consequent construction of churches inside cities. The catacombs were rediscovered during the Renaissance period and became a place of renewed worship. In the present work, the acoustic characteristics of the catacombs of San Callisto in Rome, San Gennaro in Naples, and Vigna Cassia in Syracuse are discussed. The three selected catacombs differ by type of excavation and geometry. In particular, the catacombs of San Callisto are made of narrow corridors and small rooms; the catacombs of San Gennaro consist of large rooms with niches; the catacombs of Vigna Cassia are partly excavated in the tuff and partially occupy a disused aqueduct. The acoustic measurements were performed using an impulsive sound source. The description of the acoustic characteristics focuses on the reverberation time and the Speech Transmission Index. The results show that the reverberation time was always shorter than 1 second, confirming the reduced reverberation of these environments. Finally, the speech listening characteristics are particularly good, ensuring the suitable conditions for the prayer in these spaces.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 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".