Historicizing Stelae and Sanctuaries
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This chapter works to historicize and materialize a family of ritualized practices ( molk -style rites) related to the burnt offering of perinatal infants, their deposition in a sanctuary space (conventionally dubbed “tophets”), and the dedication of carved-stone monuments alongside the deposits. Instead of religious permanence or diffusion, it argues for four moments, each with distinctive dynamics, that led communities to embrace these rites. First, between the eighth and fourth centuries BCE, these rites were tied to Phoenician colonization; then, between the fourth and second centuries BCE, the adoption of molk- style rites was tied to migration from these colonial centers. But in the long first century BCE, the boom in molk -style rites was instead tied to the creation of a new, interconnected civic elite in the space between Numidian kingdoms and the Roman province of Africa. Finally, in the second and third centuries CE, migrations related to the Roman army drove the foundation of new sanctuaries to Saturn where stelae (and often molk -style offerings) were dedicated. Stele-sanctuaries were deeply entangled with the power dynamics and institutions of empire.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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".