---
conjecture: r2-edh-b1-16
family: codex
model: "gpt-5.6-sol (codex-cli 0.144.0-alpha.4, ChatGPT-subscription auth)"
model_stamp_corrected: "2026-08-07 — archives were first written stamped gpt-5.5 by a runner bug (the stamper read config.toml's default instead of the -m flag actually passed). The calls themselves ran on gpt-5.6-sol throughout; only the label was wrong. Corrected in place, noted here rather than silently."
received: 2026-08-07
template: PROMPT_TEMPLATE_v1.md sha256 4344aabfacfe88362c56d89b6c89d594a7bf3a221e18a16b0e351482447e512f
rivals_parsed: 3
validation: VALID
---

{
  "rivals": [
    {
      "mechanism": "The compact curves may be created by conditioning on EDH inclusion and on having an assigned date, rather than by concentrated production. Canonical Imperial-period inscriptions are more readily recognized, dated, and catalogued, while chronologically atypical or ambiguous material is more likely to remain undated or outside a Roman-focused catalogue.",
      "why_it_explains_the_same_evidence": "The same corpus scope and dateability filter apply to provinces in both alphabetical halves, so they can compress every eligible province's dated-row distribution into the well-represented centuries and yield universal passage of a six-century window. The mechanism also explains why the result concerns dated catalogue rows without implying that the underlying production of inscriptions was similarly compact.",
      "named_confounds": [
        "conditioning on availability of an assigned date",
        "period-dependent dateability",
        "Roman-period corpus inclusion",
        "selection of objects into the catalogue"
      ],
      "discriminating_test": {
        "description": "Construct a stratified census of inscribed objects from excavated contexts in several provinces that includes EDH-dated, EDH-undated, and non-EDH objects, and date them independently using stratigraphy or associated finds. Apply the registered peak-centered six-century statistic to this independently dated census and separately to its EDH-dated subset.",
        "computable_on_held_data": false,
        "what_result_favors_rival": "The EDH-dated subset remains above 90%, but the independently dated complete census falls below 90% or has substantially heavier temporal tails because previously undated or excluded objects occupy those tails."
      }
    },
    {
      "mechanism": "Catalogue dating conventions may manufacture temporal compression: uncertain inscriptions can receive conventional, rounded, or midpoint dates concentrated in a few standard centuries. The resulting histogram would reflect how chronological intervals were encoded or converted into rows, not the timing of inscription production.",
      "why_it_explains_the_same_evidence": "If EDH applies similar dating conventions throughout the catalogue, both training and holdout provinces will show the same central heaping. Because the window is centered on the observed modal century and spans six centuries, even moderate convention-driven heaping can make every sufficiently large province exceed 90%.",
      "named_confounds": [
        "chronological interval midpoint assignment",
        "century-boundary rounding",
        "conventional dating of uncertain inscriptions",
        "date-precision heterogeneity"
      ],
      "discriminating_test": {
        "description": "Using EDH's raw lower and upper date bounds, recompute the statistic separately for narrowly dated records and broadly dated records, then repeat it under interval-censored sensitivity analyses that allocate each broad-date record to every admissible century or sample from its admissible interval rather than using a single representative date.",
        "computable_on_held_data": true,
        "what_result_favors_rival": "Passage is concentrated among broad or rounded dates, century values exhibit strong conventional heaping, and one or more reasonable interval allocations drive provinces below 90%; a real production-era concentration should be comparatively robust and visible among narrowly dated records."
      }
    },
    {
      "mechanism": "A province's EDH rows may be dominated by a few intensively excavated sites, monument groups, or publication batches whose own occupation or deposition phases are short. Aggregating those harvests creates an apparent provincial peak even if inscription production across the province's sites and settlements was temporally heterogeneous.",
      "why_it_explains_the_same_evidence": "Uneven archaeological recovery and publication are general features of catalogue construction and need not correlate with alphabetical province order. If most eligible provinces are numerically dominated by one or a few temporally coherent site-level harvests, both halves will satisfy the registered province-level threshold without a province-wide production era.",
      "named_confounds": [
        "site-level sampling concentration",
        "uneven excavation intensity",
        "publication-batch effects",
        "digitization-harvest effects",
        "row-weighted provincial aggregation"
      ],
      "discriminating_test": {
        "description": "Group held-out rows by findspot or site and, where available, source collection or publication. Recompute each province's curve after equal-weighting sites, capping each site's contribution, and sequentially removing the largest sites or source batches; also measure whether independent sites within a province have concordant peak centuries.",
        "computable_on_held_data": true,
        "what_result_favors_rival": "The provincial threshold fails or the peak shifts substantially after dominant sites or batches are down-weighted, while site-level peaks are mutually discordant. A province-wide production-era mechanism predicts substantially greater stability and cross-site peak concordance."
      }
    }
  ],
  "no_viable_rival": false,
  "notes": "These mechanisms concern identification of the cause of compactness, not the validity of the reported descriptive generalization. Discriminating analyses should retain the registered six-century window and minimum-support rule."
}
