Investigating Diet and Regional Origins in the Smith's Knoll Skeletal Sample, Stoney Creek, Using Stable Isotopes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis uses stable isotopic analysis to identify diet, geographic origins and long-term residency in a sub-sample of the Smith’s Knoll skeletal collection, soldiers who died during the June 6th 1813 Battle of Stoney Creek. The major objectives of this study have been to differentiate between two major modes of dietary consumption, one wheat-based, the other maize-based, in an attempt to decipher British colonial from American soldiers. These objectives were paired with stable oxygen and strontium isotopes, two isotopic elements presently used to identify migration and regional origins. Oxygen isotopic results from teeth suggest that, as children, 5 individuals may have originated in North America. Nine individuals have isotopic signatures indicative of both a North American or United Kingdom origins. The isotopic composition from bone collagen and phosphate suggest similar geographic origins, with diets composed of both wheat- and maize-based foods. Bone phosphate values indicate that 2 individuals possibly resided in North America. The remaining 20 individuals have bone values indicative of long-term residency in both geographic regions with a significant amount of dietary mixing. These results suggest that other military participants, soldiers from the King’s 8th Regiment and Canadian militiamen, may also be represented in this study. Prior investigations have omitted this crucial information, focusing their historic research primarily on the British 49th Regiment. The data presented in this thesis offers a broader geographic, pan-nationalistic perspective on the possible infantrymen and militiamen who fought during the battle, including select Canadian militiamen from the Niagara region and the King’s 8th Regiment from Britain.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
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".