The Chalcolithic metallurgical tradition of Northeast Iberia and its later influence: new analyses and a synthesis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Our knowledge of Chalcolithic copper smelting practices across Iberia is extensive but lacks regional nuance. This prevents an assessment of regional trajectories that may depart from a general ‘Iberian technological tradition’, including their origins and diachronic evolution. This paper contributes to these questions by analysing 3rd millennium BC copper production residues from various sites in Northeast Iberia: Covas Cartanyà, del Buldó, Josefina d’Escornalbou, de l’Heura, and Balma del Duc. Using pXRF, OM, and SEM-EDS, we characterise the ores used and the metallurgical operations conducted (including smelting of copper carbonates, co-smelting of sulphidic and oxidic ores, and melting), and discuss them in relation to their contexts, contemporaneous materials and available lead isotopes data. We reveal Northeast Iberian metallurgy as a distinct and versatile tradition that selectively adopted elements from Southern Iberia and Southern France traditions, and trace the legacy of these idiosyncratic practices in copper and bronze making over two millennia.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.012 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".