Middle Dorset Variability and Regional Cultural Traditions: A Case Study from Newfoundland and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research addresses the issue of variability within the Middle Dorset (2000-1100 B.P.) culture on the island of Newfoundland and on the island of Saint-Pierre in the French Archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Practice theory provides the conceptual framework to interpret variability and it is argued that the variability expressed in the Middle Dorset material record reflects the existence of distinct regional traditions. The comparative study of specific aspects of the lithic technology at eight Middle Dorset sites identified a strong process of regional specialization in the technological practices of these Palaeoeskimo people. Raw material use-patterns indicate a strong reliance on regionally available raw materials. Stylistic analysis also identifies discrete stylistic trends. Endblades take an emblematic role as most sites produced distinct and recognizable endblade types. With a few exceptions, the data reveal a high degree of technological homogeneity within individual sites and scarce evidence of contact between sites. At a larger scale, the evidence also indicates faint contact between Newfoundland/Saint-Pierre and Labrador Middle Dorset groups. In this research, the author suggests that the distinct regional technological practices reflect traditions of discrete territorially-defined social groups, much like the historical –muit groups in the Arctic. The picture proposed for the Newfoundland/Saint-Pierre region is one of a number of contemporaneous Middle Dorset groups, each living in discrete territories with their own technological traditions and specific developmental histories.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".