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Obsidian regime shifts
Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).
Claim (verbatim)
Obsidian regime shifts. Obsidian is archaeology's ideal tracer: every piece can be chemically fingerprinted to its volcanic source, so its spread maps prehistoric exchange with unusual precision. Falloff with distance from source is conventionally summarized by a single distance-decay exponent — steep when goods move by short overland hand-to-hand steps, shallow when transport is efficient. The conjecture is that transport revolutions register as sharp breaks in this one constant: when seafaring arrives in a region, the decay exponent of its obsidian distributions should step down abruptly rather than drift, because boats collapse the effective cost of distance. Sourced Melos and Anatolian obsidian distributions traced through time should therefore show a datable discontinuity in the exponent coinciding with the advent of maritime transport.
Prediction clause (verbatim)
For the sourced Melos and Anatolian distributions through time, bin sourced obsidian finds by period and fit distance-decay curves of frequency against distance from source, estimating the decay exponent per period. Primary clause: at the horizon where seafaring is independently attested, the fitted exponent drops by at least one-third of its prior value, and a piecewise breakpoint model beats a constant-exponent model by ΔAIC > 10 with the fitted break located at that horizon within one period bin. The verdict follows the primary clause.
Kill-dataset (verbatim)
sourced Melos and Anatolian distributions through time.
Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior scholarship. Kills and prior scholarship are credited here, by name, as they come in.
On Inferpedia
This conjecture has been linked to the following subject pages on Inferpedia — an encyclopedia of the missing, now in limited preview.
Provenance
Run: Imported conversation (verbatim harvest) · model: claude-fable-5
Origin: operator conversation with Claude Fable 5 at max effort, conducted 2026-07-03, relayed verbatim by the operator into the shepherd session on 2026-07-04. No ModelRun exists for the original generation (it happened outside the pipeline); this transcript file is the canonical capture. Transcript path: docs/generated/conjecture_harvest_fablemax_20260703.md. Model (operator-attested, not pipeline-recorded): claude-fable-5. Novelty disclaimer (verbatim, load-bearing -- rule 4): "Same caveat as before, doubled: at 100 items across all of archaeology and history, some of these will have cousins in the literature I can't check. What I can guarantee is the format — each links two things not normally linked, and each names the dataset or measurement that would kill it."
Novelty / leakage triage
anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run
Obsidian distance-decay is a mature methodology (Renfrew's fall-off curves and refinements; agent-based exchange modeling), and Melian network data is actively studied; the specific diachronic break-detection — the decay exponent stepping down at the onset of seafaring — was not located as tested.
- Renfrew fall-off-curve framework (overview) — The established decay methodology
- 'Viewing Melian Neolithic Obsidian Networks from the Western Side of the Aegean Sea' — Current Melos distribution data
Predictions
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