Understanding the history of the late Roman synagogue at Huqoq in Israel’s Galilee through radiocarbon dating and observations on site formation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Galilean-type synagogues are monumental, basilical structures found in northern Israel that have long been dated, mainly on stylistic grounds, to the 2nd - 3rd centuries CE. This chronology is influenced by historical considerations - specifically, the notion that monumental synagogues must have been constructed before Jews came under Christian rule in the early 4th century. However, the stratigraphic contexts of the pottery and coins associated with the foundation of these buildings suggest they represent an architectural innovation dating to the 4th (especially the later 4th) to 6th centuries CE. The Huqoq Excavation Project was initiated in 2011 with the goal of determining the construction date of a Galilean-type synagogue through controlled stratigraphic excavation, including the systematic collection of samples for radiocarbon dating along with micromorphological analysis of the fill deposits. Here we present the initial results of these analyses, which indicate that the radiocarbon ages conform with the pottery data to place the construction of the Huqoq synagogue in the late 4th - early 5th centuries (late Roman period). However, the ages of dated samples from thick fills overlying the floor, which were deposited when the synagogue was rebuilt and expanded in the early 14th century (late medieval/Mamluk period) do not reflect the stratigraphic sequence.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".