The osteology and provenance of a portion of the Parkinson collection, Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain, c. 1897
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This article presents the results of combined osteological and archival research into the demographics, preservation condition, taphonomy, pathology, cultural modification, and collecting history of that specific portion of the Parkinson collection of human crania from New Britain, collected c. 1897, currently housed in the Etnografiska Museet (Ethnography Museum), Stockholm, Sweden. This assemblage of crania (n = 45) was acquired by Richard Heinrich Robert Parkinson (1844–1909), a Danish explorer and anthropologist initially in the employ of the Hamburg based J. C Goddefroy & Sohn in Samoa trading firm. In 1897, after independently settling on the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain with his family and beginning to make collecting trips to local communities and those on neighboring islands, this collection of crania eventually came to reside at its present location. This article provides the first in‐depth analysis of the osteology of this collection contextualized within what is known and knowable about its ownership history and movement between collection and arrival in Stockholm. This includes translation of previously untranslateded correspondence from the original German that provide heretofore undisclosed information about Parkinson's collecting activities. Osteological analysis includes age and sex estimation, taphonomic modification as an indicator of initial depositional environment, discussion of select examples of pathology and trauma, and the comparative analysis of decorative motifs (where present). Results indicate a primarily young adult male assemblage, but with all major age classes and both sexes present. Incidents of trauma and pathology are low, but some unique examples are highlighted. The results of the taphonomic analysis reveal new insights into most probable means of primary and secondary deposition before collection and export to Europe. Overall, the work presented here furthers the argument that research into colonial‐era collecting and trading of human remains is most effective when osteological and archival research is conducted together whenever possible.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
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".