Characterizing centrality: Obsidian consumption, supra-regional connectivity, and social reproduction at the Early Bronze Age sanctuary of Keros (Cyclades, Greece)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Early Bronze Age [EBA] Keros was a central place in the 3rd millennium cal BC Cycladic islands (Greece). Its material culture attests links with communities throughout the Aegean and beyond. This study uses obsidian sourcing to help reconstruct the socio-economic networks that coalesced at the site. Some 207 artifacts were elementally characterized using portable x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy [pXRF], the material coming from two ritual deposits in the Kavos area (n = 103), and the opposite islet settlement of Dhaskalio (n = 104). The results are consonant with the cosmopolitan character of Keros' ceramic and metallurgical assemblages with not only the expected Melian sources of Dhemenegaki and Sta Nychia represented, but also handfuls of much rarer material from Giali A in the Dodecanese and East Göllü Dağ in central Anatolia. The study also provides further evidence for a Cycladic and Cretan preference for Sta Nychia raw materials in the EBA. A more complex picture of Melian obsidian consumption locally and regionally is then produced by integrating the sourcing data with the artifacts' techno-typological and metrical attributes, which enables us to detail several EBA cultural traditions or 'communities of practice' across the Aegean region. The small quantities of Giali A and East Göllü Dağ obsidian are testimony to the supra-regional networks that coalesced at the site. Both raw materials likely circulated alongside the flow of Anatolian metals into the Aegean (including tin and gold), a network that introduced socially significant media and knowledge to Keros from as far east as the Indus. This congregation of people, resources, and technical know-how on Keros formed a key mode of social reproduction in Cycladic society with the mortuary and commemorative rituals on Kavos and the commensal gatherings on Dhaskalio comprising important spaces for the initiation, maintenance, and celebration of social relations.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".