Natufian architecture 12,000 years ago: Analyzing ‘building stones’ at Nahal Ein Gev II
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the Southern Levant, the Natufians established a long-lasting tradition of using stones, along with other materials, for construction. Initial field observations at Nahal Ein Gev II suggested that such stones are natural blocks or cobbles that frequently underwent some kind of modification. To further investigate this pattern and better understand construction techniques and design, a protocol was developed at the site to record and analyze the construction stones, labelled BL for ‘Building Stones.’ This paper presents our initial results. Our analysis reveals that basalt and limestone were commonly used as BL, consistent with the lithology of the geological formations around the site. A large proportion of the BL are broken, perhaps as a result of intentional ‘calibration’ of the stones aimed at making them fit into the structure's walls. Consistency in modal BL size reveals some of the norms that underlie the design of the structures. The presence of several types of sheen was noted on the BL; some forms being related to the use of bonding material employed in wall construction, while other forms may indicate surface treatment. Finally, the construction traditions documented at the site are considered in the broader context of Natufian technical innovation and inter-site variability.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
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".