On the Validity of the Capsian and Iberomaurusian Entities (Northwest African Later Stone Age)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Capsian is an early Holocene Northwest African tradition. Since 1933, it is divided into two facies: the Typical Capsian and the Upper Capsian. Recently, Dachy et al. (2023) claimed to have discovered a third facies. Their evidence for this claim comes from two key observations: one distinguishing the new facies from the Upper Capsian and the other from the Typical Capsian. But a passage from Sheppard (1987), who studied much of the same material, seems to directly contradict one of these observations. Meanwhile, the other observation is challenged by doubts previously expressed by the authors themselves (Perrin et al., 2020), doubts that seem to have been set aside in their 2023 paper. It therefore seems currently difficult to recognize their third Capsian facies. The authors further imply that their discovery of a third facies would mean that the “term ‘Capsian’ alone can no longer be used to designate a single, coherent cultural whole .” They suggest, therefore, redefining the word “Capsian” in terms of space and time. But the existence of a third facies would not necessarily render the Capsian incoherent. The Iberomaurusian’s unity is here also provisionally defended in response to a similar idea expressed recently. Despite these issues, the work of Dachy et al. (2023) remains an interesting contribution that highlights the potential value of future excavations in the Oum el Bouaghi region of Algeria. The current paper, in closing, argues that to discuss the value of traditional labels like “Iberomaurusian” and “Capsian,” lithic analysts would need to adopt a standard method for data collection and publication. Such a method is in development.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 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".