# DRAFT ADJUDICATION — Popper Engine rivals stage, tranche 3 (FINAL)

**STATUS: DRAFT — awaiting orchestrator countersignature. Not a registered verdict.**

Scope: the 19 archived Family B (Grok 4.5 expert) rival responses for batch
`r2-edh-b1`, conjectures 01, 02, 03, 04, 06, 07, 08, 09, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18,
19, 20, 23, 24, 25 — the complete set of `r2-edh-b1`'s 19 registered
SURVIVES-LEG survivors (`popper_r2_edh_registration_20260806.md` §"VALIDATION
EVENT 1"). 36 minted rival mechanisms (18 conjectures × 2) plus one
`no_viable_rival` declaration (conjecture 13) = 37 adjudicated items, closing
out the Popper rivals stage's first run (tranches 1+2 covered all 24 `r3-b1`
survivors; this tranche covers all 19 `r2-edh-b1` survivors; 43 of 43 total).

Inputs read in full: the 19 files in `docs/generated/popper_rivals/r2-edh-b1/grok/`;
the 19 `docs/generated/popper_rivals/evidence/r2-edh-b1-*.md` blocks; the
registration doc `docs/generated/popper_r2_edh_registration_20260806.md` (all
sections, both Validation Event 1 and the pre-commit countersignature);
`docs/generated/popper_r2_edh_pinned_blockA.json` (frozen SQL, eligibility
tables, training values for all 25 Block A conjectures) and
`docs/generated/popper_r2_edh_scoring_values_20260806.json` (machine-scored
holdout verdicts, near-boundary flags, per-province breakdowns). Read as
binding precedent, in full: `ADJUDICATION_DRAFT_tranche1_20260806.md` and
`ADJUDICATION_DRAFT_tranche2_20260806.md`, including both countersignature
sections — the standing REFUTED-vs-DEFECTIVE filing rule (tranche-2 ruling 3,
"Lane's Rule"), amendment #9 (bookkeeping-integrity point-nulls exempt from
mechanism grading — no instance of that class exists in this tranche, EDH
carries no analogue to NAMAMI's `holding_is_not_origin` flag, so the class
logic is inapplicable rather than triggered), and the DEFECTIVE class itself
(reserved for rivals whose own test cannot be coherently formulated against
the actual held architecture, not merely for rivals that turn out to be wrong).

All tests below were executed read-only against the live census DB
(`docker compose exec -T db psql`, and one `docker compose exec -T db psql -t -A`
CSV export feeding local seeded Python/numpy simulations), 2026-08-07. The DB
holds both EDH halves landed (81,855 rows total, source_id=68, slug `edh`) —
the same post-holdout state the registered scoring pass itself worked from.
No files other than this one were touched; no git actions taken; no network
access; the archived rival/evidence files, the registration doc, and the
`popper_r3_b1`-lane files were read-only and untouched. The concurrent
`apps/scriptome/services/namami_traditions.py` vocabulary lane was not opened
or referenced (EDH, `source_id=68`, is architecturally disjoint from NAMAMI,
`source_id=51`; nothing in this tranche touches that table).

**How to read the verdicts** (protocol `docs/DESIGN_POPPER_RIVALS_STAGE_20260806.md`
§3, applied per tranche-1/2 precedent): RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA (the
rival's own proposed test ran on data we hold, and the result cuts against
the rival) · RIVAL-LIVE (plausible and undischarged — no held-data test
exists, a test ran but did not discharge the rival, or a test ran and the
result actually leans toward the rival) · RIVAL-DEFECTIVE (the rival's own
test cannot be coherently formulated against the real held architecture — not
triggered anywhere in this tranche; see the closing summary). A
NOT-COMPUTABLE rival converts to LIVE, never to refuted. Per-conjecture
grade: STRENGTHENED iff both rivals land REFUTED/DEFECTIVE; INTERPOLATION-ONLY
iff either rival is LIVE; conjecture 13 (no viable rival minted) gets its own
category, STRENGTHENED-UNCHALLENGED, per the orchestrator's archive-time note.

**Headline finding, stated up front so it isn't buried:** this tranche's
rival landscape looks structurally different from `r3-b1`'s. EDH is a single,
closed, physical-object catalogue (Roman epigraphy, frozen since 2021); we
hold **no** second Roman-epigraphy source, no independent excavation/survey
corpus, no province-area or population data, and no photograph/squeeze
*content* (only a work-status label naming the verification method). A
schema-and-source inventory was run before adjudicating anything (`\d`,
`jsonb_object_keys(raw)` over all 81,855 rows, and a full listing of the 61
`CatalogueSource` rows) specifically to verify this rather than assume it —
`trismegistos` (id 55) is registered as a source but holds **zero** harvested
rows. The consequence: a large fraction of this tranche's rivals propose a
comparison against exactly this kind of external comparandum, and are
genuinely, verifiably NOT-COMPUTABLE — not a scoring shortcut, a fact about
what this box holds. Where a rival instead proposes something computable from
EDH's own fields (`_scriptome_harvest.province_code`, `type_of_inscription`,
`type_of_monument`, `material`, `language`, `transcription`, `work_status`,
`responsible_individual`, `findspot`/`findspot_modern`/`present_location`,
`last_update`, `date_start`/`date_end`/`date_precision`), it was run for
real, and several of those tests are the tranche's sharpest findings — see
the "uninformative floor" and "denominator artifact" results below (07, 08,
16, 19, 24), which land with the same severity as `r3-b1`'s korcis/J&K
findings and must be read with the same "do not soften it" discipline the
brief sets. Simulations used seed **20260807** (partition/base seed; the two
multinomial sims and the binomial sim each draw from `seed+1`/`seed+2`
sub-streams to keep runs independent), 10,000 replications throughout.

---

## r2-edh-b1-01 — Top-5 holdout provinces hold ≥45% of the 32-province total

**Registered mechanism:** uneven modern excavation/recovery effort
concentrates catalogued inscriptions in a handful of well-excavated
provinces. Training 64.21% → holdout 48.77% (survived; not near-threshold).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Real ancient production-intensity differences (urbanization, admin importance, garrisons, local epigraphic culture) — orthogonal to alphabetical province-code order. | Yes — opposite locus (ancient reality vs. modern recovery effort). | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Province-area artifact: raw counts dominated by the largest-*area* units, independent of excavation intensity per unit area. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**Verification (both rivals):** a full inventory of every `raw` JSON key on
all 81,855 EDH rows (`jsonb_object_keys(raw)`, 28 keys) and of every
`CatalogueSource` we hold (61 rows) confirms: no province-area figure, no
population/urbanization index, no excavation-count or museum-holdings tally,
and no second Roman-epigraphy or general-antiquity corpus exists anywhere on
this box (`trismegistos`, id 55, is registered but has 0 harvested rows).
Both rivals' own proposed tests name exactly this class of external
comparandum. **Missing datum, r1:** independent ancient-urbanization/
population-density and modern-excavation-effort proxies. **Missing datum,
r2:** province area in km².

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** Both rivals distinct and genuinely
untestable on data we hold — this is the pattern the orchestrator's
archive-time note anticipated for 01 and named explicitly ("verify we truly
lack the data... those go LIVE"); confirmed by direct inventory, not assumed.

---

## r2-edh-b1-02 — No single holdout province accounts for ≥30% of the total

**Registered mechanism:** the bounded counterpart of 01 — no single
excavation/collection effort dominates a half-alphabet partition. Training
18.20% → holdout 11.87% (survived comfortably).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Alphabetical-ordering artifact: the accident of province-code naming happens to sort large/well-catalogued provinces into the first half, so *any* half would show a low max-share, not because of a real bound on excavation/collection dominance. | Yes — locates the cause in the split mechanism itself, not in a real-world ceiling. | Yes. | **true** | true, confirmed | Executed — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | EDH's own long-running, multi-contributor cataloguing/publication strategy structurally prevented any one province from accumulating a dominant share — a database-construction-policy artifact, not a real bound. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed** — random-partition simulation, serving both 02-r1 and
03-r1 at once (per the orchestrator's own note that these overlap), seed
20260807, 10,000 reps: the full set of 65 real EDH provinces (62 with
landed rows + 3 legitimately-zero named codes, `Ass`/`Tri`/`Val`, confirmed
zero via the master per-province table and added back explicitly so the
simulated population matches the true 65-unit set) was randomly shuffled and
split into a 33/32 partition 10,000 times; for each replicate's 32-member
half, the max single-province share was computed.

```
random.Random(20260807).shuffle(65 provinces) -> 32/33 split, 10,000 reps
share = max(province_n in half) / sum(half) * 100
```

Result: only **6 of 10,000** replicates (0.06%) produce a 32-member half with
a max share ≥30% (mean max-share across all reps: 16.73%, range 8.98%–32.98%
— the true alphabetical holdout's 11.87% sits comfortably inside this
ordinary range, not as an outlier). Per rival 1's own criterion ("if
alternative partitions frequently produce a single-province share above 30%
... this favors the rival; if every reasonable balanced partition keeps the
maximum under 30%, this favors the proposed bound") — **99.94%** of random
partitions also keep the maximum under 30%. This is a clean, decisive
refutation: the ≤30% ceiling is not a fragile artifact of the specific
alphabetical cut.

**r2 missing datum:** independent tallies of published Roman inscriptions
(CIL, AE, or any second epigraphic database) — not held (see 01's inventory
finding).

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r2 alone guarantees this) — but the
substantive finding is a clean positive for the base conjecture: its own
sharpest rival is refuted at the 99.94% level.

---

## r2-edh-b1-03 — Heavy-tailed province-size shape recurs (≥12/32 <300 AND ≥5/32 ≥1,000)

**Registered mechanism:** the same unevenness-of-recovery story as 01/02,
expressed as a shape claim. Training 18/33 <300, 9/33 ≥1,000 → holdout
exactly 12/32 <300 (precisely the registered floor) and 15/32 ≥1,000
(survived; **clause 1 is a knife-edge, flagged near-threshold in the
registration's own scoring** — `WITHHELD-PENDING-REDERIVATION` before
independent re-derivation confirmed SURVIVES-LEG).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | The 65-province list is a fixed, already heavy-tailed set; *any* roughly-balanced partition (alphabetical or otherwise) will reproduce comparable small/large counts, independent of any recurring modern-recovery process. | Yes — a pure statistical-artifact-of-partitioning claim, no real-world process required. | Yes. | **true** | true, confirmed | Executed — see below. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors)** |
| r2 | EDH's own decades-long multi-contributor coverage pattern (many minor provinces recorded lightly, a handful concentrated) — an editorial/coverage-policy artifact, not a general recovery process. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed** — the same random-partition simulation as 02-r1 above
(one execution serving both rivals, cited per-rival as the orchestrator
directed), seed 20260807, 10,000 reps, each replicate's 32-member half
checked against both of 03's own floors:

Result: **9,459 of 10,000** replicates (94.59%) satisfy **both** floors
jointly. Broken down: the "≥5 at ≥1,000" clause alone clears in 99.99% of
reps (mean 11.84 vs. the floor of 5 — essentially automatic, any random
32-province draw from a corpus this size grabs enough large provinces); the
"≥12 <300" clause alone clears in 94.60% of reps (mean 14.75 vs. the floor
of 12). Per rival 1's own criterion, verbatim ("if the great majority of
random partitions also satisfy both floors, this favors the rival
[statistical property of partitioning a fixed heavy-tailed list]; if only
the alphabetical split ... does so, this favors the proposed
unevenness-of-recovery shape claim") — **94.59% is a great majority**. This
favors the rival, decisively, on its own stated terms; **this is the
quantified partition-imbalance measurement the orchestrator's note
anticipated, and its convergence with amendment #8 is exact**: the shape
claim is substantially a property of splitting *any* fixed heavy-tailed
65-unit list into ~32/33, largely independent of whether "modern recovery
effort" specifically (the registered mechanism) is doing any work at all.
**Not softened further, but calibrated:** the actual observed value (exactly
12, the minimum passing count) sits noticeably below the random-partition
mean (14.75) — a real, non-vacuous 5.4% of possible partitions *would* have
failed clause 1, so the floor retains some residual bite; it is not
perfectly vacuous the way 07/08's genre/material floors turn out to be
below.

**r2 missing datum:** same as 02-r2 — no independent Roman-epigraphy corpus
held.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY**, with the partition-imbalance finding
disclosed prominently as a severity lesson feeding the registered r2-b2 note
(matching the orchestrator's own framing — "whatever it shows becomes a
quantified partition-imbalance measurement," not softened here).

---

## r2-edh-b1-04 — Date-coverage heterogeneity (≥1 province <35% dated AND ≥1 >95%)

**Registered mechanism:** province-specific epigraphic conventions and
modern cataloguing depth vary widely, not clustering centrally. Training
[15.49%, 100.0%] → holdout [13.40% (MaT), 99.60% (Nor)] (survived; flagged
near-threshold in the registration's own scoring before independent
re-derivation).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Contributor/import-pipeline data-entry practice, not province-specific ancient convention or a coherent per-province "depth" judgment — some provinces' date fields were populated systematically by one pipeline/contributor, others left largely undated by a different one. | **Close call, resolved YES** — see note. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — decisive. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Small-sample/binomial volatility at the N≥30 eligibility floor: extreme shares are a chance artifact of low support, not real heterogeneity. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — decisive. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**Distinctness note on r1 (flagged for orchestrator, same pattern as
tranche-1's 04-r1/06-r1):** the registered text's own phrase is "province-
specific epigraphic conventions **and modern cataloguing depth**," which
already gestures at *something* about modern cataloguing varying by
province. Resolved DISTINCT because the registered text names an *outcome*
("varies widely and unevenly") without committing to a specific driver,
while r1 commits to a specific, falsifiable claim (contributor/pipeline
identity, not a per-province judgment, is the driver) — but recorded
transparently per precedent, for re-check.

**r1 test executed** — EDH's own `responsible_individual` field (a named
editor per record, real and populated on 81,853/81,855 rows) lets us check
whether the SAME contributor shows a stable personal dating-practice across
provinces, or whether their rate tracks whichever province they worked on:

```sql
SELECT raw->>'responsible_individual', count(*),
       count(*) FILTER (WHERE date_start IS NOT NULL) AS n_dated
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord
WHERE source_id=(...'edh') AND raw->'_scriptome_harvest'->>'province_code' IN ('MaT','Nor')
GROUP BY 1;  -- run separately per province
```

Result: **Gräf** shows 41.86% dated on Mauretania Tingitana (n=43) but
**99.27%** dated on Noricum (n=1,102) — the same person. **Feraudi** shows
16.13% dated on MaT (n=62) but **99.86%** on Nor (n=740) — again the same
person. Both of MaT's low-rate contributors *also* worked heavily on Nor and
were near-100% dated there. Per r1's own criterion ("if extremes persist
inside single-contributor subsets, this favors the proposed province-specific
conventions") — the extremes **track province, not contributor identity**,
even within one person's own body of work. Clean refutation.

**r2 test executed** — a constant-rate binomial simulation with the
*actual* eligible-province sizes, exactly as directed:

```
p_global = pooled dated-rate over the 29 eligible (N≥30) holdout provinces = 66.4140%
for each province's real N: draw Binomial(N, 0.664140) x 10,000 (numpy, seed 20260809)
```

Result: **every one of the 29 eligible provinces**, including the smallest
(LyP, N=61) and the largest (HiC, N=4,685), shows **P(simulated share <35%
or >95%) = 0.0000** — not "low," zero across 10,000 draws each. Summed
expected extreme-count across all 29 under this constant-rate model: **≈0**.
Actual observed: **15 of 29** (51.7%) eligible provinces land outside
[35%,95%]. Per r2's own criterion ("if large provinces still exhibit dated
shares under 35% and over 95%, this favors ... genuine province-level
heterogeneity") — large provinces do (Nor N=2,771 at 99.60%; PaI N=3,134 at
99.20%; PaS N=4,259 at 98.22%), and the sheer frequency/scale of extremes is
many orders of magnitude beyond anything constant-rate sampling noise could
produce. Clean, decisive refutation.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED.** Both rivals genuinely distinct, both
computable, both decisively refuted by independent, differently-shaped
tests (a cross-province contributor trace and a constant-rate simulation) —
one of the tranche's few clean strengthenings.

---

## r2-edh-b1-06 — Exact-precision dating stays ≤40% of dated rows, every eligible province

**Registered mechanism:** a documentation-convention ceiling — precise
single-year dating is intrinsically rare in Roman epigraphy generally.
Training (corrected) 38.14% (Asia) → holdout 38.46% (Mauretania
Tingitana) — **the registration's own §7 pre-commits this conjecture to
independent re-derivation regardless of which side of the line it falls**;
that re-derivation is already complete per Validation Event 1
("06 survived its pre-committed watch at 38.4615% vs the 40% ceiling").
This tranche's task is the *rivals*, not a further re-derivation of the base
verdict, but 06's fragility is directly relevant context below.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | EDH's own editorial/data-entry convention systematically prefers ranges even when a single year is knowable from the text — a database-recording-practice artifact, not a fact about Roman epigraphy at large. | Yes — locates the cause in EDH's own construction, not the ancient corpus generally. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Type-composition limit: exact single-year dates concentrate in specific inscription genres (e.g. dated formulaic types) that never make up more than ~40% of any province's corpus — a compositional ceiling, not a general convention. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — favors the rival. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors)** |

**r1 missing datum:** original-text/scholarly re-examination of dated
inscriptions to check for recoverable single years EDH coded as ranges —
not held (no independent scholarly-edition corpus).

**r2 test executed** — exact-precision share broken down by
`type_of_inscription`, corpus-wide, genres with ≥100 dated rows:

```sql
SELECT raw->>'type_of_inscription', count(*) FILTER (WHERE date_start IS NOT NULL),
       count(*) FILTER (WHERE date_precision='exact')
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=(...'edh')
GROUP BY 1 HAVING count(*) FILTER (WHERE date_start IS NOT NULL) >= 100;
```

Result: **military diploma** sits at **65.53% exact** (270/412 dated) — well
above the 40% ceiling — followed by public legal inscription (36.77%) and
mile-/leaguestone (30.33%), against epitaph's 1.19% and votive's 7.09% at
the other end. Diplomas carry consular dating formulas by genre convention,
and stay a tiny minority everywhere (≤500 of 81,855 corpus-wide). Per r2's
own criterion, verbatim ("if one or more inscription types show
exact-precision rates well above 40% while the province aggregates remain
under 40% because those types are a minority, this favors the rival") —
this is exactly what the data shows: at least one real, coherent genre
clears the ceiling by a wide margin, and every province's aggregate stays
under 40% only because that genre stays a minority share everywhere. Given
06's own registered margin is 1.86 percentage points (a genuinely
at-risk instrument per the registration's own §3/§7), a province with an
elevated diploma share is a live compositional risk to this ceiling, not a
merely theoretical one.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** r1 undischarged (external); r2 executed
and favors the rival — a real compositional mechanism exists and is
quantitatively demonstrated, feeding the base conjecture's existing
near-boundary watch flag rather than opening a new one.

---

## r2-edh-b1-07 — Genre-vocabulary floor: ≥8 distinct type_of_inscription values, every eligible province

**Registered mechanism:** a cataloguing/vocabulary-breadth floor — any
province with enough material to clear N≥150 typed rows should show
reasonable genre diversity. Training min 11 (n=196) → holdout min 14 of 20
eligible provinces (survived comfortably; not near-threshold).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Multinomial-sampling artifact: EDH's genre vocabulary is skewed but has enough real breadth (43 non-null values) that *any* sample of ≥150 records drawn from the shared global frequency distribution will almost certainly show ≥8 distinct types, with no real province-level diversity required. | Yes — a pure sampling-statistics claim, no substantive content assumed. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — decisive, favors the rival. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors, decisive)** |
| r2 | Cataloguing-intensity artifact: provinces that clear N≥150 are precisely the ones that got thorough modern cataloguing, which mechanically uses more of the vocabulary; diversity tracks cataloguing effort, not real generic variety. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — favors the rival. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors)** |

**r1 test executed** exactly as directed — multinomial simulation, seed
20260808, 10,000 draws per eligible province, using the true empirical
`type_of_inscription` frequency distribution (43 non-null categories,
61,229 typed rows corpus-wide) as the sampling weights:

```python
probs = global_genre_frequencies / sum   # 43 categories
for each of the 20 holdout-eligible provinces' own N:
    draws = rng.multinomial(N, probs, size=10000)
    distinct = (draws > 0).sum(axis=1)
    P_below_8 = mean(distinct < 8)
```

Result: **P(<8 distinct genres) = 0.000000** for **every single one** of the
20 eligible provinces, from the smallest (Umbria, N=151) to the largest
(Pannonia superior, N=3,813) — zero occurrences in 10,000 draws each, not a
small number. Per r1's own criterion, verbatim ("if simulations under the
observed global frequencies almost never produce fewer than 8 distinct
genres for samples ≥150, this favors the rival") — this is unambiguous. At
this vocabulary's actual shape, N=150 makes failing the 8-distinct floor by
honest sampling essentially impossible regardless of whether a province's
material has any real diversity of its own. **This is not softened: the
floor is uninformative** at the eligibility threshold as registered.

**r2 test executed** — genre diversity broken down by `responsible_individual`
within large eligible provinces (a real contributor/editor field, not
invented for this test):

Noricum: Gräf (n=1,102) → 23 genres; Feraudi (n=740) → 21; Cowey (n=360) →
9; **Böhm (n=214) → 5** (fails the floor); **Siegl (n=199) → 7** (fails);
**Krenn (n=144) → 6** (fails); Lopez (n=8) → 2; Osnabrügge (n=4) → 3.
Pannonia superior: Feraudi (n=3,055) → 25; **Cowey (n=50) → 7** (fails);
**Gräf (n=21) → 6** (fails). Diversity tracks contributor-slice *volume*
within a single province — small-volume slices of the same province fail
the exact floor the province-level aggregate clears easily. Per r2's own
criterion this favors the rival, though it is the same underlying
statistical fact as r1's multinomial result (more records → more chances to
sample rare categories) rather than independent confirmation of a distinct
cataloguing-*intensity*-specific story.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY — uninformative-floor finding, not
softened.** Both rivals executed, both favor the rival, one decisively
(P=0.000000 at every eligible N). Feeds the registered r2-b2 note: a
diversity floor pinned near the sampling-inevitability line of its own
global vocabulary and eligibility threshold has near-zero power to
distinguish "genuine provincial diversity" from "recorded enough rows from
a shared vocabulary" — same severity class as the finding below for 08 and
16.

---

## r2-edh-b1-08 — Material-vocabulary floor: ≥5 distinct material values, every eligible province

**Registered mechanism:** identical vocabulary-breadth reasoning to 07,
applied to `material` (162 distinct non-null values held, not the "118"
originally cited — informational only, doesn't change the floor). Training
min 7 (n=67) → holdout min 8 of 18 eligible provinces (survived
comfortably).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Same multinomial-sampling artifact as 07-r1, applied to the material vocabulary (162 categories). | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — decisive, favors the rival. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors, decisive)** |
| r2 | Same cataloguing-intensity artifact as 07-r2. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — favors the rival. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors)** |

**r1 test executed** — same method as 07-r1, seed 20260808, 10,000 draws
per province, true empirical `material` frequency distribution (162
categories, 37,002 typed rows corpus-wide):

Result: **P(<5 distinct materials) = 0.000000** for **every one** of the 18
eligible provinces, from the smallest (Umbria, N=53) to the largest
(Pannonia superior, N=3,737). Same unambiguous conclusion as 07-r1, at an
even lower absolute N (53 vs. 07's 151) because the floor here (5) is also
lower relative to a richer 162-category vocabulary.

**r2 test executed** — same contributor-slice breakdown as 07-r2, on
`material` instead of `type_of_inscription`: Noricum's low-volume slices —
Böhm (n=214) → 9 materials (clears); Siegl (n=199) → 6 (clears); **Krenn
(n=144) → 5** (exactly at the floor); Lopez (n=8) → 3 (fails); Osnabrügge
(n=4) → 3 (fails). Pannonia superior: **Gräf (n=21) → 7** (clears, but
thin); Lopez (n=7) → 1 (fails); Osnabrügge (n=1) → 1 (fails). The pattern is
the same as 07-r2, slightly less severe (the material floor of 5 is lower
relative to its own vocabulary size than the genre floor of 8 is), but
still favors the rival by its own criterion.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY — uninformative-floor finding, not
softened**, the direct sibling of 07's result.

---

## r2-edh-b1-09 — Epitaph/votive is the plurality genre in ≥85% of eligible large provinces

**Registered mechanism:** funerary/votive epigraphy dominated everyday
Roman-world inscriptional practice broadly, a Mediterranean-wide cultural
pattern (Rome excluded from scope). Training 11/12 (91.7%) → holdout 19/19
(100%) (survived comfortably).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Differential survival: durable stone epitaphs/votives survive and are recovered at far higher rates than painted, wooden, or temporary texts, so they dominate EDH regardless of whether they dominated actual ancient practice. | Yes — locates the cause in material survival, not ancient cultural preference. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Modern cataloguing/publication has historically prioritized funerary/votive monuments, over-representing them relative to less-systematically-published types. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**Missing datum, both:** independent corpora capturing less-durable media
(graffiti, wooden tabulae, painted inscriptions) or independent local
survey/CIL-volume genre counts to compare against EDH's own — not held
(confirmed by the same source inventory as 01). Both rivals target what
Grok's own note on this file correctly anticipates: "the survival/publication
layer... both need external corpora... likely LIVE pair."

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** Both rivals distinct, both genuinely
untestable on data we hold — exactly the pattern Grok itself flagged in its
own submission note, confirmed on independent reassessment.

---

## r2-edh-b1-11 — Frontier instrumentum domesticum ≥10% in Raetia and/or Noricum

**Registered mechanism:** legionary brick/pipe/tile production and stamping
concentrates along militarized frontier zones, extending from the Rhine to
the upper-Danube. Training 17.6–20.5% (Rhine) → holdout Rae 17.28%, Nor
6.52% (survived — only one of the two named targets needed to clear 10%).
**Note the pinning pass's own disclosed narrative weakening:** corrected
denominators show non-frontier Aquitania (19.02%) and Aegyptus (19.40%)
comparably high to the frontier group — relevant background for r2 below.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Modern recovery/cataloguing priority: regions with active archaeological projects or museums specializing in instrumentum finds show elevated shares, regardless of ancient military presence. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable; supplementary proxy run, inconclusive. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | General Roman construction-volume proxy, not military-specific: any province with heavy overall building activity shows elevated instrumentum share. | Yes — a non-military mechanism. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — refutes. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 missing datum:** independent regional archaeological reports or museum
inventories of stamped bricks/tiles/pipes — not held. **Supplementary proxy
run for context (not a discharge):** `present_location` (the object's
current museum/repository, a real held field) for Raetia's 145 instrumentum
rows spreads across **20 distinct locations** (103 with no recorded
location at all), with the single largest museum holding only 6/145 (4.1%)
— diffuse, not concentrated in one specialist collection, which leans
*against* a single-museum-driven story but does not test what r1 actually
proposes (comparison to *external* project/museum intensity data).

**r2 test executed** — the orchestrator's own directed internal proxy for
"general construction volume": `building/dedicatory inscription` share of
typed genre rows, compared against `instrumentum domesticum` share of
typed-monument rows, across all 43 provinces with N(monument-typed)≥100:

```sql
SELECT province,
  instrumentum_domesticum_pct, -- of type_of_monument-typed rows
  building_dedicatory_pct      -- of type_of_inscription-typed rows
FROM ... GROUP BY province;
```

Result: **Pearson r = 0.1138** (n=43) — essentially no relationship. The
highest-building-share provinces (Umbria 11.92%, Latium et Campania 10.33%,
Asia 10.65%) show unremarkable instrumentum shares (2.13%, 2.83%, 2.04%);
the highest-instrumentum provinces (Lugdunensis 36.33%, Barbaricum 31.11%,
Narbonensis 22.12%) show unremarkable building shares (2.66%, 3.55%, 1.87%).
Per r2's own criterion ("if instrumentum share is predicted better by a
general construction proxy than by frontier status... this favors the
rival") — it is not; the internal proxy shows essentially zero predictive
power. **Caveat stated plainly:** `building/dedicatory inscription` share is
an imperfect proxy for actual construction *volume* (it only captures
inscribed dedicatory texts, not physical building activity broadly), so this
is a real but partial test, not a proof that no construction-volume effect
of any kind exists.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r1 alone guarantees this) — but the
substantive finding favors the base conjecture: its one internally-testable
rival is refuted by a real, if imperfect, held-data proxy.

---

## r2-edh-b1-12 — Frontier military-diploma presence: ≥3 finds in Raetia and/or Noricum

**Registered mechanism:** veteran discharge-diploma deposition concentrates
on actively-garrisoned frontier provinces, by the same frontier-military
logic as 11. Training Dac 44, GeS 17, Bri 13, GeI 3 → holdout Rae 45, Nor 16
(survived comfortably, both targets clear).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Modern recovery/museum-collection intensity in provinces with active military archaeology, independent of ancient deposition patterns. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Concentration in one or a few large findspots/bulk museum assemblages that happened to enter EDH together, not diffuse frontier-wide deposition. | Yes — an idiosyncratic-cache story, distinct from a diffuse frontier pattern. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — refutes. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 missing datum:** independent regional archaeological reports/museum
catalogues of diploma finds — not held.

**r2 test executed** — findspot breakdown of Raetia's and Noricum's diploma
rows (`findspot_modern`/`findspot_ancient`, real, populated fields), and the
count remaining after excluding each province's single largest findspot:

```sql
SELECT findspot_modern, findspot_ancient, count(*)
FROM ... WHERE province='Rae' AND type_of_inscription ILIKE '%diploma%'
GROUP BY 1,2 ORDER BY 3 DESC;  -- + same for Nor
```

Result: Raetia's 45 diplomas spread across **18 distinct findspots**; the
largest (Neustadt/Donau, ancient Abusina) holds only 9 (20.0%) — excluding
it leaves 36, still far above the floor of 3. Noricum's 16 diplomas spread
across **9 distinct findspots**; the largest (St. Pantaleon-Erla, ancient
Lauriacum) holds 5 (31.25%) — excluding it leaves 11, still far above the
floor. Per r2's own criterion ("if excluding the largest single findspot...
drops one or both named provinces below 3, this favors the rival; if the
counts remain above 3... this favors the proposed general
frontier-deposition mechanism") — both stay well clear. Clean refutation.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r1 alone guarantees this) — substantive
finding favors the base conjecture, same pattern as 11.

---

## r2-edh-b1-13 — Latin-West/Greek-East language divide (Jireček-line pattern)

**Registered mechanism:** the well-documented Latin-dominant-West /
Greek-dominant-East epigraphic-language boundary. Training: Latin-West
0.0–1.89%, Greek-East 7.95–48.10% non-Latin → holdout: Latin-West 19/19
(100%) <5%, Greek-East **4/5 (exactly 80.0000%)** ≥5% (survived — its own
80% group-pass threshold, on the nose; flagged `near_threshold: true` /
`WITHHELD-PENDING-REDERIVATION` in the machine scoring before independent
re-derivation confirmed SURVIVES-LEG).

**No rivals were minted — Grok declared `no_viable_rival: true`, the first
(and only, in this tranche) such declaration of the whole rivals stage**,
with its own stated reasoning: "the proposed mechanism is the standard
historical account of the Latin–Greek epigraphic divide; no alternative
causal process of comparable plausibility generates the same sharp,
regionally asymmetric language shares across both alphabetical partitions."
Per the DESIGN doc's own restraint clause (§1: rivals should be minted only
where a genuinely comparable-plausibility alternative exists, not manufactured
for coverage), this is the model exercising exactly the discretion the
protocol asks for, on what is — by every measure in this batch, including
its own directional/mechanism-based flag (★) — the flagship, most
historically well-attested claim in the whole `r2-edh-b1` set.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED-UNCHALLENGED.** No rival was minted to test, and
none is owed retroactively — a genuine absence-of-viable-rival, not a gap in
this adjudication. **Disclosed alongside, not smoothed over:** the
conjecture's own Greek-East clause survived at **exactly 80.0000% (4 of 5
then-eligible provinces)**, its own group-pass threshold to four decimal
places — the single knife-edge exact-boundary case anywhere in this
tranche's 19 conjectures (matching 03's exact-12/32 knife edge above in
kind, though 03 drew rivals and 13 did not). "Unchallenged" describes the
rival-testing result, not the underlying margin; both are true
simultaneously and belong in the same sentence for anyone citing 13 as
STRENGTHENED.

---

## r2-edh-b1-14 — Epigraphic-habit peak in {0,1} (1st/2nd century AD), Mesopotamia exempted

**Registered mechanism:** the epigraphic habit — inscription rates rose and
peaked within the early-to-mid Principate across most of the Roman world.
Training 12/12 → holdout 18/18 eligible provinces (excluding the T3-named
Mesopotamia carve-out) (survived comfortably).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Differential survival/destruction: 1st–2nd-c. stones were less often reused/destroyed than later ones, creating an apparent production peak that is actually a preservation peak. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Modern scholarly publication/cataloguing priority favored classic-Principate material, artificially peaking EDH's dated totals there even if true ancient erection rates were flatter. | Yes. | Yes. | **true** | **false — reversed** (see note) | Not computable as literally proposed; supplementary proxy run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 missing datum:** a stratigraphically-dated (vs. epigraphically/
formulaically-dated) subsample, or an independent total-recovery excavation
series — not held.

**r2 reassessment (Grok flagged true; reassessed false):** the rival's own
proposed test needs either (a) restriction to inscriptions dated by
"paleographic, contextual, or non-formulaic criteria" — we hold no
dating-*method*/criteria field (confirmed against the full 28-key raw
inventory; `date_precision` records exact/range/unknown, a different axis
entirely, not formulaic-vs-not), or (b) an external total-recovery corpus —
not held. Both sub-tests are genuinely NOT-COMPUTABLE as proposed; this
reverses Grok's own "true" flag, in the opposite direction from most of
tranche 1/2's reversals (there, Grok under-claimed computability; here it
over-claimed it) — exactly the "wrong in both directions" case the brief
asks to watch for. **Supplementary, non-equivalent proxy run for
transparency, not counted as a discharge:** `last_update` (a real,
81,855-row-populated EDH-internal field, 4,187 distinct dates spanning
1990–2021) split into pre-2010 vs. 2010+ cohorts, peak-century bucket
recomputed per province×era. Among the 18 holdout-eligible provinces, **zero**
show a peak-bucket flip outside {0,1} across era (some shuffle between
bucket 0 and 1 internally, which doesn't touch the kill condition). Two
*training* provinces (Africa Proconsularis, Belgica — out of this
tranche's scope, disclosed as context only) do show such a flip
(bucket 1→2 and 1→3 respectively, more-recently-touched cohort peaking
later) — suggestive, but out of scope and not a substitute for the rival's
own literally-proposed test.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r1 alone guarantees this). The r2
computability reversal and its supplementary-proxy caveat are both flagged
for the orchestrator's attention below.

---

## r2-edh-b1-16 — Compact curve: ≥90% of dated rows within a 6-century peak window

**Registered mechanism:** epigraphic production concentrates around one
historical peak era per province, not spread evenly. Training (corrected)
91.08% (Baetica) → holdout min 92.59% (Narbonensis) of 18 eligible provinces
(survived; near-threshold, `WITHHELD-PENDING-REDERIVATION` before
independent re-derivation confirmed SURVIVES-LEG).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Total-span arithmetic: most provinces' *entire* dated material already spans ≲6 centuries, so the 90%-in-window result is close to automatic by construction, not evidence of genuine single-era concentration. | Yes — a pure arithmetic-coverage claim. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — favors the rival, partially. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors, partial)** |
| r2 | Dating-method availability bias: precise century assignment clusters near each province's formula-driven mode; peripheral material gets a wider/excluded treatment, inflating the apparent in-window share. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — favors the rival, decisively on 2/18. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors)** |

**r1 test executed exactly as directed** — total dated span (earliest to
latest century-bucket) per eligible province:

```sql
SELECT province, min(bucket), max(bucket), (max-min+1) AS span_centuries
FROM ... GROUP BY province HAVING count(*)>=150;
```

Result, restricted to the 18 holdout-eligible provinces: **6 of 18 (33%)**
have a total span within one century of the 6-century window width itself
(PaS, Num, MaC at exactly span=6; Sam, MoS, PaI at span=7) — for these, 90%
coverage is close to arithmetically automatic once the window is well-placed,
regardless of any genuine peaking structure. The remaining 12 have span 8–12
centuries, real room to have failed and mostly didn't. **Calibration, not
softened but precise:** the empirically closest-to-failing holdout province
(Narbonensis, 92.59%) has span=9 — three centuries of slack beyond the
window — so the claim's most informative, most at-risk case is *not* one of
the arithmetically-automatic ones; the floor retains genuine bite for its
own tightest case even though it is close to vacuous for a third of the
eligible population.

**r2 test executed** — a stricter, equally-defensible "falls within the
window" reading: require **both** endpoints of a range-precision row's date
(`date_start` bucket AND `date_end` bucket) inside the peak window, rather
than the registered instrument's start-year-only test:

```sql
-- window_n counted only where bucket_start AND bucket_end both fall in [peak-2,peak+3]
```

Result: **two of the 18 holdout-eligible provinces flip below the 90%
floor** under this reading — **Transpadana 82.47%** (down from 93.51% loose)
and **Thracia 85.95%** (down from 94.59% loose). The next-lowest,
Narbonensis, stays just above at 91.25%; the other 15 remain comfortably
clear. (Context, out of scope: the training province Belgica drops to
62.24% under the strict reading — a striking number, disclosed for
completeness, not counted here.) Per r2's own criterion, verbatim ("if the
share inside the six-century window falls below 90 percent for multiple
provinces under the expanded or uniform treatment, the result favours the
dating-assignment artefact") — this is exactly the outcome, on real,
computed numbers, for two named holdout provinces. **Not softened.**

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY — uninformative/fragile-floor finding.**
Both rivals executed and both favor the rival on real computation, joining
07/08/19/24 as this tranche's severity-lesson family; feeds the same
registered r2-b2 note.

---

## r2-edh-b1-18 — Bracket-density (textual-loss marker) floor: ≥35%, every eligible province

**Registered mechanism:** the epigraphic convention of bracket-marking
lost/restored text is applied broadly and consistently, reflecting routine
ancient physical damage. Training min 50.71% (Aemilia) → holdout min 39.26%
of 27 eligible provinces (survived comfortably).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Publication selection favors fragmentary/restored inscriptions for detailed transcription over complete ones, enriching the catalogue for bracket-bearing records regardless of the true population damage rate. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Editorial house-style over-applies brackets to mark even minor/formulaic uncertainty, only loosely coupled to real physical loss. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable; supplementary proxy leans against. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 missing datum:** a total-recovery sample from systematic excavation/
museum inventory that doesn't inherit publication-filter preference for
incomplete pieces — not held. **r2 missing datum, as literally proposed:**
linked photographs/squeezes to check bracket-vs-physical-loss correspondence
— we hold `work_status` (a verification-*method* label: "checked with
photo," "checked through autopsy," "provisional," etc.) but not photograph
or squeeze *content*, so the rival's own test cannot be run. **Supplementary
proxy run for transparency, not a discharge:** bracket-density by
`work_status` category, corpus-wide — "checked through autopsy" (the most
rigorous, direct physical-examination status) shows the **highest** bracket
rate (72.26%), and "provisional" (the least rigorous) the **lowest**
(59.66%). This runs opposite to r2's story (over-marking corrected under
rigorous re-examination would predict the reverse); if anything it is
mildly consistent with brackets tracking real, carefully-verified physical
condition. Disclosed as informative context, not counted as a formal
refutation since it doesn't test what r2 actually proposes.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** Both rivals genuinely untestable as
proposed; the r2 proxy is a candid, if partial, positive for the base
conjecture.

---

## r2-edh-b1-19 — Identification-uncertainty ceiling: <25% '?'-suffixed monument types, every eligible province

**Registered mechanism:** a ceiling on identification uncertainty, set well
above the observed training maximum. Training max 18.06% (Dacia, excl. a
small Alpine outlier) → holdout max 13.57% of 23 eligible provinces
(survived comfortably; not near-threshold).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Denominator-selection: only confidently-identifiable pieces get a `type_of_monument` value at all; the most ambiguous material is left untyped and silently excluded from the denominator, keeping the "uncertain-among-typed" rate artificially low. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — decisive, favors the rival. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors, decisive)** |
| r2 | Conservative editorial convention: epigraphers assign a most-likely type whenever plausible and reserve the formal `?`-flag only for the clearest irreducible cases — an editorial-threshold story, not a material ceiling. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed, scored explicitly using conjecture 20's own coverage
data as directed** ("untyped shares are exactly 20's subject; the
13.16%-coverage province makes the rival's point"): the recomputation
treats every untyped row as an additional "uncertain" record (r1's own
proposed test), then checks the revised rate against 25% for **19's own 23
actually-eligible holdout provinces** (not merely the Sardinia example 20
surfaces):

```sql
SELECT province, count(*) AS n_total,
       count(*) FILTER (WHERE type_of_monument LIKE '%?') AS n_qmark,
       count(*) FILTER (WHERE type_of_monument IS NULL) AS n_untyped
FROM ... GROUP BY province;
-- revised_rate = (n_qmark + n_untyped) / n_total
```

Result: **16 of 19's own 23 eligible holdout provinces (69.6%) flip from
PASS to BREACH** of the 25% ceiling under this single, alternative,
equally-legitimate reading of "uncertain" — including provinces central to
the registered claim (HiC 42.60%, LaC 72.17%, Nor 28.58%, Rom 47.76%). Only
7 (Lig, Mak, MoI, MoS, PaI, Thr, Tra) stay under 25% either way. Sardinia
itself — the 13.16%-coverage province named in conjecture 20's own results
— is not even in 19's eligible pool (its N(typed)=30 falls below 19's own
100-row floor), but applying the same recomputation to it anyway shows a
revised rate of **87.72%** (2 qmark + 198 untyped of 228 total), the single
most extreme illustration of the mechanism in the whole 51-province
population checked (both halves, N≥100). Per r1's own criterion, verbatim
("if including the untyped rows as uncertain pushes the rate above 25
percent for multiple provinces... this favours the denominator-selection
mechanism over a genuine material ceiling") — 16 of 23 is not "multiple,"
it is most. **Not softened**: this is the single most decisive
favors-the-rival finding in the tranche by proportion of the actual
eligible population affected. The registered ceiling mechanically survives
(untyped rows genuinely don't count under the frozen, registered
denominator), but its apparent comfort margin is substantially a product of
that specific denominator choice.

**r2 missing datum:** an independent team re-classifying a stratified
sample under an explicit liberal-flagging instruction — not held (needs
human labor we cannot supply from data alone).

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY — headline denominator-artifact finding,
not softened.** Joins 07/08/16/24 as this tranche's uninformative/fragile-
floor family; the r1 test here is the sharpest single result in that family
by the fraction of the real eligible population it flips.

---

## r2-edh-b1-20 — Monument-type documentation coverage heterogeneous (≥1 <30% AND ≥1 >90%)

**Registered mechanism:** cataloguing depth for monument type varies by
province/collection history (a curatorial-resourcing property). Training
[19.92%, 97.92%] → holdout [13.16% (Sardinia), 93.01%] of 27 eligible
provinces (survived; near-threshold before independent re-derivation
confirmed SURVIVES-LEG).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Differential survival of type-diagnostic physical features (shape, decoration, context) — an intrinsic material-preservation property, not a resourcing property. | Yes — opposite locus from the registered "curatorial resourcing" story. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Source-publication/entry-campaign policy differences, baked into the fixed catalogue, not aligned with province per se. | **Close call, resolved YES** — see note. | Yes. | true | true | Executed via `last_update` — genuinely favors/confounds. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors)** |

**Distinctness note on r2 (flagged for orchestrator, same pattern as
04-r1):** the registered mechanism itself already says "province/collection
**history**," which could be read as already encompassing when-cataloguing-
happened effects. Resolved DISTINCT because the registered text frames this
as a smooth per-province resourcing property, while r2 commits to a
discrete batch/campaign-policy claim — recorded transparently for re-check.

**r1 missing datum:** independent archaeological condition assessments or
high-resolution photographs of a sampled cross-section — not held.

**r2 test executed — checking, as directed, what `last_update`/
`work_status`/`literature` actually support:** `literature` is free citation
text (not a structured, independently-held corpus — doesn't qualify as a
"batch ID"); `work_status` names verification method, not entry campaign;
**`last_update` is real** — 4,187 distinct EDH-internal dates, 1990–2021,
genuinely populated on all 81,855 rows. Coverage recomputed by era:

```sql
SELECT CASE WHEN last_update<'2010' THEN 'pre2010' WHEN last_update<'2018' THEN '2010-2017' ELSE '2018+' END,
       count(*), pct_with_type_of_monument
FROM ... GROUP BY 1;
```

Result: pooled coverage **46.24% (pre-2010) → 77.59% (2010–2017) → 82.80%
(2018+)** — a real, substantial 37-point era effect. Sardinia specifically
is 73.2% pre-2010-vintage (167/228 rows) at only **5.99%** coverage in that
era-slice, vs. Pannonia superior's 97.8% 2010–2017-vintage rows at **92.99%**
coverage. Per r2's own criterion ("if coverage clusters more tightly by
source/entry campaign than by province... this favours the batch/source-
policy mechanism") — cataloguing vintage and coverage are strongly linked,
though province and era-mix are themselves confounded here (province and
"when it got prioritized for cataloguing" aren't cleanly separable with
what we hold), so this is reported as real, genuinely executed support,
not a clean discharge either way.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r1 alone guarantees this); r2's
`last_update` finding is a genuine, disclosed partial confound, distinct in
character from 25-r2's negative result below on the same method.

---

## r2-edh-b1-23 — Transpadana's Cisalpine stele tradition (≥20% stele share)

**Registered mechanism:** a regional Cisalpine funerary-monument tradition,
extending from training-side Aemilia (corrected 43.81%) to Transpadana.
Holdout: Transpadana 21.38% (survived; near-threshold, single-exemplar
claim disclosed as a limitation from the start).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Modern Italian scholarly/cataloguing convention applies "stele" more liberally to Cisalpine material because Aemilia and Transpadana share the same modern literature/source corpora and cataloguers — a labeling-practice artifact, not an ancient shared tradition. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed via contributor-overlap proxy — genuinely mixed. | **RIVAL-LIVE (mixed)** |
| r2 | Differential survival/geology: shared Po-valley depositional conditions preferentially preserve upright steles (or destroy altars/sarcophagi) in this zone, independent of cultural preference. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed** — no independent re-typology exists to impose (Grok's
own proposed test), but `responsible_individual` lets us check whether the
SAME cataloguers who worked Aemilia/Transpadana apply "stele" at comparably
elevated rates in explicitly non-Cisalpine control provinces:

Aemilia's 85 stele rows are **100% one contributor** (Gräf). Transpadana's
31 split Feraudi 71% (22), Scheithauer 16% (5), Gräf 10% (3), Masci 3% (1).
Control provinces, same contributors: **Etruria** — Gräf entered 17 of its
24 stele rows (71%), yet Etruria's *overall* stele share of typed monuments
is only **5.10%** (Gräf's presence there does not inflate the share).
**Umbria** — Feraudi (52%) and Gräf (32%) both present, and Umbria's stele
share is **31.21%**, *higher* than Transpadana's own 21.38%, despite Umbria
never being named as part of the Cisalpine zone. Liguria (context, adjacent
region): 25.98%. This is genuinely mixed: Gräf's heavy Etruria presence
*without* an elevated Etruria share argues against a pure contributor-habit
story; Feraudi's dual heavy presence in both Transpadana and (the even
higher) Umbria is at least suggestive of something contributor-linked.
**Base-conjecture wrinkle, flagged for the orchestrator (not a rival-grade
issue, same spirit as tranche-1/2 practice):** Umbria — a control, not a
named Cisalpine province, not part of training or holdout scope for 23 —
shows a *higher* stele share than the named holdout target itself, which
suggests whatever the true mechanism is (cultural, contributor, or
otherwise) is not narrowly confined to "Cisalpine Gaul" as the registered
text names it.

**r2 missing datum:** independent geological/preservation-condition survey
data — not held.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** r1 executed via a genuine, if partial,
proxy and lands mixed/non-dispositive rather than cleanly either way; r2
undischarged. The Umbria wrinkle is flagged separately below.

---

## r2-edh-b1-24 — Date-range width average stays in [20, 250] years, every eligible province

**Registered mechanism:** range-precision date resolution falls within a
normal, convention-driven band. Training [26.63, 231.37] → holdout min
71.20 years (Rome) of 24 eligible provinces (survived comfortably, not
near-threshold in either direction).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Denominator-selection: only moderately-constrained pieces get assigned a range at all; wide-uncertainty material is left `unknown` and excluded, forcing the surviving average into the band by construction. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — favors the rival. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors)** |
| r2 | Data-entry interface/schema-default encoding artifact: EDH's recording templates favor a restricted set of round-number-adjacent widths, not independent scholarly judgment per inscription. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed (modality half) — favors the rival, decisively. | **RIVAL-LIVE (favors)** |

**r1 test executed** — correlation between each eligible province's
`unknown`-precision share (the excluded population) and its average
range-width:

```sql
SELECT province, pct_unknown_precision, avg(date_end-date_start) FILTER (WHERE date_precision='range')
FROM ... GROUP BY province HAVING count(*) FILTER (WHERE date_precision='range')>=30;
```

Result: **Pearson r = −0.6152** (n=51 provinces, both halves) — a real,
moderate-to-strong negative correlation. Narrow-average-width provinces
show high exclusion (Galatia 26.63yr avg / 73.56% unknown; Arabia 46.34yr /
73.08% unknown); wide-average-width provinces show low exclusion (Alpes
Cottiae 231.37yr / 2.11% unknown; Noricum 136.46yr / 0.40% unknown). Per
r1's own criterion this leans toward the rival — provinces that exclude more
material as `unknown` do systematically retain a narrower-average range-
dated remainder. **Causal caution, stated plainly:** correlation is real and
computed honestly, but a common-cause story (provinces with generally
thinner documentation show both more blanks and less-developed dating
practice) is at least as consistent with this number as r1's specific
selection mechanism; it does not threaten 24's own comfortable margins
either way (holdout min 71.20yr sits 256% of the 20yr floor's own value
away from it).

**r2 test executed (the computable half; the free-form-redating half is
not)** — the width-*modality* check the orchestrator directed:

```sql
SELECT (date_end-date_start) AS width, count(*)
FROM ... WHERE date_precision='range' GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC;
```

Result: strikingly non-natural clustering at round-number-**minus-one**
values (an inclusive-endpoint encoding signature) — width **99**: 12,243
rows (21.5% of all 56,909 range-precision rows, by far the single largest
bucket); **149**: 5,451; **199**: 5,398; **299**: 4,922; **49**: 4,265.
These five values alone account for **32,279 of 56,909 range-precision rows
(56.7%)** — over half the entire range-dated population lands on just five
specific widths, out of a theoretically continuous space of possible
values. This is exactly the "strongly multimodal at template intervals"
signature r2's own criterion asks for. **Interpretive caveat, not a
softening of the number itself:** century-level dating (giving width 99,
i.e. "100–199 AD") is *also* a normal, substantive scholarly convention in
epigraphy, not necessarily an empty database default — so the modality's
existence is undisputed and favors the rival's empirical prediction exactly
as stated, but whether it reflects "arbitrary encoding constraint" vs.
"genuine century-bucket scholarly judgment" is not fully resolved by this
test alone. The second half of r2's own proposed test (free-form re-dating
under a protocol ignoring EDH's templates) needs human scholarly labor and
is not computable here.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** Both rivals executed (r2 partially),
both genuinely favor the rival on real numbers, neither threatens 24's own
comfortable margins. Joins the uninformative/fragile-floor family.

---

## r2-edh-b1-25 — Photographic-documentation coverage heterogeneous (≥1 >40% no-image AND ≥1 <3%)

**Registered mechanism:** photographic-documentation effort/resourcing
varies by province/collection history — the imaging counterpart of 20.
Training [0.0%, 55.94%] → holdout [0.0%, 51.25%] of 27 eligible provinces
(survived comfortably).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Inherited unevenness of illustration in the *original paper* source publications EDH ingested from — a historical-publication-practice property, upstream of EDH's own modern resourcing. | Yes — a different, earlier layer than the registered "collection history" story. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not computable. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Different EDH data-entry phases/teams applied inconsistent image-attachment policy — a batch/campaign artifact. | **Close call, resolved YES** — same note as 20-r2. | Yes. | true | true | Executed via `last_update` — refutes. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 missing datum:** independent illustration-density records for the
original paper corpora EDH ingested from — not held.

**r2 test executed** — the same `last_update`-era method as 20-r2, applied
to no-image rate:

```sql
SELECT era, count(*), pct_work_status_no_image FROM ... GROUP BY 1;
```

Result: pooled no-image rate by era is **16.79% (pre-2010) → 19.50%
(2010–2017) → 20.19% (2018+)** — a much *weaker* spread (≈3.4 points) than
20's coverage effect (37 points). Crucially, per-province, the extremes
**persist within a single province across eras**: Baetica (the highest
no-image province) stays elevated in *both* its major eras — 54.91%
pre-2010 (n=1,872) and 58.31% in 2010–2017 (n=1,125); Africa Proconsularis
and Aquitania (near-zero no-image) stay near 0% across *every* era they
appear in (0.53%/0.00%/0.33% and 0.00%/0.00%/0.29% respectively). Per r2's
own criterion, verbatim ("if the province-level extremes disappear once
batch is controlled for, this favours the rival... [implicitly, if they
persist, this favours the registered per-province mechanism]") — they do
not disappear; Baetica stays high and Africa/Aquitania stay low regardless
of cataloguing vintage. Clean refutation, on the same method that gave 20-r2
a genuinely different (favoring) result — the two provinces' underlying
phenomena differ (coverage tracks era; no-image tracks something more
persistently province-specific), and both results are reported as found,
not smoothed toward consistency with each other.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r1 alone guarantees this) — but a
genuine positive for the base conjecture: its one internally-testable rival
is refuted, with the refutation running on the identical method that
favored 20's rival, a useful methodological pairing for the record.

---

## Closing summary — 19 conjectures, draft grades

| Conjecture | Rival 1 verdict | Rival 2 verdict | **Draft grade** | One-line reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| r2-edh-b1-01 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Both rivals need external area/urbanization/excavation-effort data; confirmed absent by full source inventory. |
| r2-edh-b1-02 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Random-partition sim: 99.94% of partitions also keep max-share under 30%; r2 needs an external corpus. |
| r2-edh-b1-03 | LIVE (favors, 94.6% convergence) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Same partition sim: the shape claim is ~a property of partitioning any fixed heavy-tailed 65-list, not specifically modern recovery effort — amendment #8 convergence, quantified. |
| r2-edh-b1-04 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | Same contributors show opposite dated-rates by province; binomial sim shows the 15/29 observed extremes are ~impossible under any constant rate. |
| r2-edh-b1-06 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (favors) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Military diploma alone hits 65.53% exact — a real compositional mechanism exists, feeding 06's own pre-committed near-boundary watch. |
| r2-edh-b1-07 | LIVE (favors, decisive: P=0.000000) | LIVE (favors) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Multinomial sim: the 8-genre floor is unfailable by chance at N≥150 given the real vocabulary shape — uninformative floor. |
| r2-edh-b1-08 | LIVE (favors, decisive: P=0.000000) | LIVE (favors) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Same finding, material vocabulary — direct sibling of 07. |
| r2-edh-b1-09 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Both rivals need external corpora capturing non-stone media or independent local counts — confirmed absent. |
| r2-edh-b1-11 | LIVE (not computable) | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Internal construction-volume proxy shows r=0.11 with instrumentum share — no relationship, refutes r2. |
| r2-edh-b1-12 | LIVE (not computable) | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Diplomas diffuse across 18/9 findspots in Rae/Nor; excluding the top findspot each still clears the floor by 10x+. |
| r2-edh-b1-13 | — no viable rival minted — | — | **STRENGTHENED-UNCHALLENGED** | Only no_viable_rival declaration of the whole stage; disclose alongside its own knife-edge 80.0000% Greek-East survival. |
| r2-edh-b1-14 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (not computable as stated; Grok flag reversed true→false) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | r2's own proposed test needs a dating-method field or external corpus, neither held; supplementary last_update proxy shows no holdout-eligible flip. |
| r2-edh-b1-16 | LIVE (favors, partial) | LIVE (favors, decisive on 2/18) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Total-span arithmetic makes the floor near-automatic for a third of eligible provinces; a stricter both-endpoints reading flips Transpadana and Thracia below 90%. |
| r2-edh-b1-18 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (not computable; work_status proxy leans against) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Both rivals need external total-recovery or photo/squeeze content; the one held proxy (verification-method rigor) points the other way. |
| r2-edh-b1-19 | LIVE (favors, decisive: 16/23 flip) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Scored against 20's own coverage data as directed: 69.6% of 19's own eligible provinces flip PASS→BREACH under the rival's proposed denominator. |
| r2-edh-b1-20 | LIVE (not computable) | LIVE (favors/confounded) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | last_update era explains a real 37-point coverage swing, confounded with province. |
| r2-edh-b1-23 | LIVE (mixed, not dispositive) | LIVE (not computable) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Contributor-overlap proxy is genuinely mixed; Umbria control shows an even higher stele share than the named holdout target — flagged separately. |
| r2-edh-b1-24 | LIVE (favors, r=-0.615) | LIVE (favors, decisive on the computable half) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Unknown-share correlates with narrower surviving widths; 56.7% of all range rows sit on just 5 round-number-adjacent widths. |
| r2-edh-b1-25 | LIVE (not computable) | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Same last_update method as 20, opposite result: Baetica/Afr/Aqu's extremes persist within-province across every era. |

**1 of 19 STRENGTHENED (04); 1 of 19 STRENGTHENED-UNCHALLENGED (13); 17 of 19
INTERPOLATION-ONLY (01, 02, 03, 06, 07, 08, 09, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20,
23, 24, 25).** Of 36 minted rivals: **6 REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** (02-r1,
04-r1, 04-r2, 11-r2, 12-r2, 25-r2), **0 DEFECTIVE**, **30 LIVE** (16 not
computable on held data as literally proposed, confirmed by direct source
inventory; 14 executed and either favor the rival outright or land
genuinely mixed — this tranche produced no case of a rival being executed
and cleanly discharged-but-not-favoring, unlike tranches 1/2's more
frequent "ran, didn't move the needle either way" outcome). Plus conjecture
13's `no_viable_rival`. **This 1-STRENGTHENED / 17-INTERPOLATION-ONLY split
is far more INTERPOLATION-ONLY-heavy than tranches 1/2** (r3-b1 combined:
10 STRENGTHENED / 12 INTERPOLATION-ONLY / 1 INTEGRITY-VERIFIED / 1
SUPERSEDED of 24) — a genuine, disclosed structural finding, not a quality
gap: EDH is this project's only Roman-epigraphy source and holds no
independent comparandum of any kind, so every "genuine ancient reality vs.
modern cataloguing/recovery artifact" rival pair in this batch (a recurring
shape across nearly every one of these 19 conjectures) is architecturally
NOT-COMPUTABLE here, by design of what this box holds rather than any
softness in the conjectures themselves. See ruling item 1 below.

---

## Every executed test — query/simulation gist and result (20 rivals tested; 16 not computable)

| Rival | Test gist | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02-r1 / 03-r1 | Random partition of the 65 real provinces into 33/32 halves, 10,000 reps, seed 20260807 | 02: only 0.06% of partitions produce max-share ≥30% (observed 11.87% is ordinary). 03: 94.59% of partitions satisfy both shape floors jointly (observed 12/32 sits at the exact floor). | 02 REFUTED; 03 LIVE (favors) |
| 04-r1 | `responsible_individual` × dated-share, MaT vs. Nor | Gräf 41.86%(MaT)→99.27%(Nor); Feraudi 16.13%(MaT)→99.86%(Nor) — same people, opposite provinces, opposite rates | REFUTED |
| 04-r2 | Binomial(N, p_global=66.41%) simulation, 29 eligible provinces' real N, 10,000 reps, seed 20260809 | P(extreme)=0.0000 at every N; actual 15/29 provinces outside [35%,95%] vs. ~0 expected by chance | REFUTED |
| 06-r2 | Exact-precision share by `type_of_inscription`, genres with ≥100 dated rows | military diploma 65.53% exact (>>40% ceiling) while staying a corpus-wide minority | LIVE (favors) |
| 07-r1 / 08-r1 | Multinomial simulation, global genre (43-cat)/material (162-cat) frequency vectors, actual eligible-province N, 10,000 draws/province, seed 20260808 | P(<8 distinct genres)=0.000000 at every N (151–3,813); P(<5 distinct materials)=0.000000 at every N (53–3,737) | LIVE (favors, decisive) both |
| 07-r2 / 08-r2 | Genre/material diversity by `responsible_individual` within Noricum and Pannonia superior | Small-volume contributor slices (n<220) fail the exact floors the province aggregate clears easily | LIVE (favors) both |
| 11-r2 | `building/dedicatory inscription` share vs. `instrumentum domesticum` share, 43 provinces (N≥100) | Pearson r=0.1138 — no relationship | REFUTED |
| 12-r2 | Findspot concentration, Rae/Nor diploma rows, excl.-largest-findspot recompute | Rae 18 findspots (top=20%, excl. still 36); Nor 9 findspots (top=31%, excl. still 11) — both far above floor of 3 | REFUTED |
| 14-r2 | Supplementary `last_update` era-split peak-bucket check (not the rival's own literal test) | 0/18 holdout-eligible provinces flip outside {0,1} by era; 2 training provinces do (out of scope) | LIVE (not discharged) |
| 16-r1 | Total dated-span (centuries) vs. 6-century window width, 18 eligible provinces | 6/18 (33%) within 1 century of the window width — near-automatic; closest actual case (Nar) has 3 centuries slack | LIVE (favors, partial) |
| 16-r2 | Strict both-endpoints-in-window recompute, 18 eligible provinces | Transpadana 82.47% and Thracia 85.95% flip below the 90% floor (vs. 93.51%/94.59% loose) | LIVE (favors, decisive) |
| 18-r2 | Bracket-density by `work_status` verification-method category | "checked through autopsy" highest (72.26%), "provisional" lowest (59.66%) — opposite of the rival's predicted direction | LIVE (proxy leans against) |
| 19-r1 | Untyped-rows-as-uncertain recompute, 19's own 23 eligible holdout provinces | 16/23 (69.6%) flip PASS→BREACH of the 25% ceiling; Sardinia (20's own example, though below 19's floor) hits 87.72% revised | LIVE (favors, decisive) |
| 20-r2 / 25-r2 | Coverage / no-image rate by `last_update` era (pre2010/2010-17/2018+) | 20: coverage swings 46%→83% by era, confounded with province (Sar/PaI). 25: no-image swings only 17%→20%, and Bae/Afr/Aqu's extremes persist within-province across every era | 20 LIVE (favors/confounded); 25 REFUTED |
| 23-r1 | `responsible_individual` overlap, Aem/Tra stele rows vs. non-Cisalpine controls (Etr, Umb) | Gräf's heavy Etruria presence doesn't inflate Etruria (5.10% share); Umbria (a control) shows 31.21% — higher than Transpadana itself | LIVE (mixed) |
| 24-r1 | Correlation, `unknown`-precision share vs. avg range-width, 51 provinces | Pearson r=-0.6152 — narrow-width provinces show real, correlated high exclusion | LIVE (favors) |
| 24-r2 | Range-width histogram, modality at round-number-adjacent values | 5 specific widths (99,149,199,299,49) hold 56.7% of all 56,909 range-precision rows | LIVE (favors, decisive on computable half) |

## Every NOT-COMPUTABLE rival — missing datum (16 rivals)

| Rival | Proposed test | Missing datum |
|---|---|---|
| 01-r1 | Correlate province counts with ancient-urbanization/population-density proxies vs. modern-recovery-effort proxies | Neither proxy held; confirmed by full source-and-schema inventory |
| 01-r2 | Recompute concentration on area-normalized (per-km²) density | Province area figures — not held |
| 02-r2 | Compare EDH shares against independent Roman-inscription tallies (CIL/AE/other database) | No second epigraphic corpus held (`trismegistos` registered, 0 rows) |
| 03-r2 | Same external-corpus comparison, applied to the province-size shape | Same — no independent corpus held |
| 06-r1 | Original-text/scholarly re-examination for recoverable single-year dates coded as ranges | No independent scholarly-edition corpus; no re-examination capability |
| 09-r1 | Compare EDH genre shares against corpora capturing non-stone/less-durable media | Not held |
| 09-r2 | Compare against independent local/regional corpora (CIL volumes, recent surveys) | Not held |
| 11-r1 | Compare EDH instrumentum shares against regional archaeological reports/museum inventories | Not held |
| 12-r1 | Same, for military-diploma counts | Not held |
| 14-r1 | Restrict to a stratigraphically(vs. epigraphically)-dated subsample, or compare to a total-recovery excavation series | Neither held |
| 14-r2 | Restrict to non-formulaic dating-criteria rows, or compare to an external total-recovery corpus | No dating-method/criteria field; no external corpus (last_update proxy run instead, not equivalent) |
| 18-r1 | Compare EDH bracket rates to total-recovery samples without publication-filter preference | Not held |
| 18-r2 | Check bracket-vs-physical-loss correspondence via linked photographs/squeezes | Only a verification-method label held, not photo/squeeze content |
| 19-r2 | Independent team re-classifies a stratified sample under a liberal-flagging instruction | Needs human labor; not derivable from data alone |
| 20-r1 | Correlate coverage with physical-completeness/condition indicators or re-examined photographs | Not held |
| 23-r2 | Compare stele shares against independent geological/preservation-condition survey data | Not held |
| 25-r1 | Compare no-image rates to the original paper corpora's own illustration density | Not held |

(17 rows above; 16 distinct rivals — 14-r2 appears once, its "as literally
proposed" form, with the supplementary proxy noted inline rather than as a
second table row.)

---

## Items needing an orchestrator ruling before countersignature

1. **The batch-level INTERPOLATION-ONLY skew (17 of 19) is a structural
   finding about EDH's single-source status, not a quality signal — but it
   is the tranche's single most consequential fact for r2-b2 planning.**
   Recommend the orchestrator treat "acquire or register access to any
   second Roman-epigraphy/antiquity corpus" (a second national epigraphic
   database, a digitized CIL/AE volume set, or a systematic-excavation
   series) as the single highest-leverage r2-b2 action for this whole
   conjecture family — it would convert a double-digit number of this
   tranche's currently-NOT-COMPUTABLE rivals (01, 02-r2, 03-r2, 09, 11-r1,
   12-r1, 18-r1, 23-r2, plausibly others) into genuinely testable ones in
   one move, the same way the NAMAMI detail-fetch pilot did for `r3-b1`'s
   01/08/35/40 family.
2. **The uninformative/fragile-floor family is now five conjectures deep
   (07, 08, 16, 19, 24), not three.** The orchestrator's own archive-time
   note named 07/08/16 explicitly; 19's denominator-artifact result
   (16/23 = 69.6% of its own eligible population would flip) and 24's
   width-modality result (56.7% of all range rows on 5 specific values) are
   comparably severe and executed with the same rigor. Recommend a single
   consolidated r2-b2 registered note covering all five, rather than
   scattering the lesson: floors and ceilings pinned near (a) a sampling-
   inevitability line relative to their own vocabulary/eligibility
   threshold, or (b) a denominator-construction choice that silently
   excludes the population that would test them, should be flagged as
   such *at minting time*, with the informativeness check (multinomial/
   binomial simulation, or a denominator-sensitivity recompute) run
   *before* registration, not discovered afterward by a rival.
3. **Three close distinctness calls, same pattern as tranche 1's 04-r1/
   06-r1 (each reversed at least once during drafting before landing on
   DISTINCT):** 04-r1 (registered text already names "modern cataloguing
   depth"), 20-r2, and 25-r2 (registered text already names "collection
   history"). All three are recorded here as DISTINCT, with the reasoning
   shown in full at each conjecture's own section — please re-check.
4. **14-r2's computability reversal runs the opposite direction from most
   of tranches 1/2's reversals.** There, Grok mostly under-claimed
   computability (false→true). Here, Grok claimed `computable_on_held_data:
   true` for a test that needs a dating-*method*/criteria field we do not
   hold, or an external total-recovery corpus we do not hold — reassessed
   false. A supplementary, non-equivalent `last_update`-era proxy was run
   for transparency and disclosed inline, but is explicitly not counted as
   a discharge of the rival's own proposed test. Flagged so the
   orchestrator can confirm this is the right call, not an
   under-generous one.
5. **23's Umbria wrinkle.** Umbria — a non-Cisalpine control province, not
   named in 23's own training or holdout scope — shows a higher stele
   share (31.21%) than the named holdout target Transpadana itself
   (21.38%), found opportunistically while testing rival 1's contributor-
   overlap proxy. This doesn't change 23's own mechanical survival (it only
   ever tested Transpadana against the registered 20% floor), but it
   suggests the true zone of elevated stele-proneness, if real, may be
   broader than "Cisalpine Gaul" as currently named. Recommend logging this
   as a candidate reformulation/extension test for r2-b2, in the same
   spirit as tranche-1's r3-b1-18-r2 J&K finding.
6. **06's compositional-mechanism finding (military diploma at 65.53%
   exact) should be attached to 06's existing near-boundary watch, not
   filed as a freestanding note.** The registration doc's own §7 already
   pre-commits 06 to independent re-derivation "regardless of which side of
   the line it falls" (true margin 1.86pp); this tranche's rival-testing
   adds a concrete, quantified compositional risk factor (a
   diploma-heavy — or public-legal- or mile-/leaguestone-heavy — province
   would be the way this ceiling actually breaks) that should travel with
   the watch flag into any future batch touching 06.
7. **Zero DEFECTIVE outcomes, matching tranche 1's own flagged pattern**
   (tranche 2 found 2, after re-filing on held documentation). Given the
   brief's standing emphasis on not defaulting to leniency, this absence is
   flagged explicitly rather than left as an unreviewed default — on
   review, no rival in this tranche mischaracterizes EDH's held
   architecture the way tranche-1's 06-r1 (FANKHA-as-live-feed-aggregator)
   or tranche-2's several NAMAMI-routing rivals did; every rival here
   either proposes a genuinely well-formed test we lack the data for, or a
   genuinely well-formed test we could and did run. Lane's Rule (tranche-2
   ruling 3) was applied throughout and never needed the DEFECTIVE
   exception.

**DRAFT — awaiting orchestrator countersignature.**

---

## COUNTERSIGNATURE — orchestrator rulings on the seven flagged items (2026-08-07)

1. **Structural finding ADOPTED as the tranche's headline.** 17/19 interpolation-only
   is a fact about EDH being a closed catalogue with no comparanda on this box, not a
   quality signal about the conjectures. **r2-b2 DIRECTIVE:** acquiring a second
   independent Roman-epigraphy corpus (EDCS/EDR licence check first) is the highest-
   leverage move for this family; without it ~16 rivals cannot be discharged even in
   principle.
2. **Uninformative-floor family ADOPTED and elevated — METHOD AMENDMENT #10:** a
   registered band must state, at minting, the probability that it could have been
   breached under a stated null (sampling, span, or template model). Bands that
   cannot fail are recorded as UNINFORMATIVE and carry no survival credit. Confirmed
   members: r2-edh-b1-07, -08, -16, -19, -24 (P(breach) = 0.000000 for the two
   diversity floors at every eligible province; 94.59% of random partitions satisfy
   03's shape floors; 56.7% of range widths sit on five template values). This is the
   severity requirement of §V biting our own instruments, and it is reported, not
   softened.
3. **Three close distinctness calls RATIFIED as DISTINCT** (04-r1, 20-r2, 25-r2) —
   registered text that gestures at part of a rival's mechanism without committing
   to it exclusively leaves the rival distinct; same reasoning as tranche-1's 04-r1.
4. **14-r2 computability reversal RATIFIED** (Grok's true → assessed false): no
   dating-criterion metadata exists to restrict on. Reversals in this direction are
   as legitimate as the other; both are recorded.
5. **23's Umbria wrinkle — ANNOTATION ORDERED.** A non-Cisalpine control exceeding
   the named holdout target's own stele share materially damages the Cisalpine-
   tradition reading. 23 stays INTERPOLATION-ONLY with this recorded on its face;
   r2-b2 must reformulate with controls named in advance.
6. **06's diploma-composition finding travels with its near-boundary watch** (true
   margin 1.86pp) — both annotations move together into any future citation.
7. **Zero DEFECTIVE acknowledged as reviewed, not defaulted.**

**FINAL TRANCHE-3 GRADES (countersigned): STRENGTHENED — 04. STRENGTHENED-
UNCHALLENGED — 13. INTERPOLATION-ONLY — 01, 02, 03, 06, 07, 08, 09, 11, 12, 14, 16,
18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25.** Rivals: 6 refuted on held data, 0 defective, 30 live.

**PROGRAMME-WIDE FAMILY-B TOTAL (43 survivors):** STRENGTHENED 11 · STRENGTHENED-
UNCHALLENGED 1 · INTERPOLATION-ONLY 29 · INTEGRITY-VERIFIED 1 · SUPERSEDED 1.
Rivals minted 84 (+1 no-viable declaration): 31 refuted on held data, 3 defective,
50 live. Family A (GPT-5.6-sol) sweep in progress; its verdicts are additive.

Countersigned: Claude (orchestrator), under the operator's standing delegation.
