---
conjecture: r2-edh-b1-14
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 common peak may be produced by EDH's dating process: inscriptions lacking firm historical dates are often assigned broad or typologically inferred ranges concentrated in the early and middle Principate. Century binning or representative-date rules can then turn shared dating conventions into a shared provincial peak.",
      "why_it_explains_the_same_evidence": "The same chronological conventions and typological reference chronologies apply throughout EDH, so an alphabetical province split would reproduce the pattern in both training and holdout provinces. A large mass of imprecisely dated records allocated to the 1st or 2nd century could determine each province's modal century even if securely dated inscriptions had a different distribution.",
      "named_confounds": [
        "typology- and formula-based date assignment",
        "chronological heaping in broad date ranges",
        "representative-date or century-binning rules",
        "circular dating from features believed characteristic of the Principate"
      ],
      "discriminating_test": {
        "description": "Recompute provincial century peaks separately for inscriptions with narrow, independently anchored dates, such as explicit consular, imperial-titulature, or dated-event evidence, and for inscriptions dated only by paleography, formula, or broad intervals. Also allocate interval-dated rows probabilistically across every compatible year instead of assigning a midpoint or single century. The stated mechanism predicts a 1st- or 2nd-century peak among securely dated records and under alternative interval handling; the rival predicts that the unanimity is concentrated in inferred or coarsely dated records and weakens under interval-censored allocation.",
        "computable_on_held_data": true,
        "what_result_favors_rival": "Securely and narrowly dated subsets frequently peak outside the 1st or 2nd century, or provincial peaks change materially after broad-range and typologically dated records are removed or redistributed."
      }
    },
    {
      "mechanism": "The peak may reflect a catalogue-entry filter rather than historical production: EDH and its source publications may disproportionately include the well-studied Latin lapidary, public, and funerary epigraphy of the early and middle Empire while omitting larger shares of earlier, later, fragmentary, non-Latin, or poorly published material.",
      "why_it_explains_the_same_evidence": "A database-wide acquisition and publication filter would operate across both alphabetical halves and could generate the same unanimous result without any province-specific coincidence. Because the holdout came from the same completed catalogue and source tradition, it tests geographic generalization inside that selection regime but does not test whether the regime represents all surviving inscriptions equally by century.",
      "named_confounds": [
        "source-corpus inclusion bias",
        "publication bias toward canonical high-imperial inscriptions",
        "differential digitization by language, text type, and period",
        "exclusion or undercataloguing of fragments and late-antique material"
      ],
      "discriminating_test": {
        "description": "For a stratified sample of provinces and archaeological sites, compare EDH entries against independent, exhaustive site inventories or regional corpora that enumerate all inscribed finds, including fragments, non-Latin texts, and late-antique material. Estimate EDH inclusion probability by century while controlling for material, text type, completeness, and language, then inverse-probability-weight the century totals. The stated mechanism predicts that the common peak persists after correcting coverage; the rival predicts substantially lower EDH inclusion outside the 1st and 2nd centuries and shifted corrected peaks.",
        "computable_on_held_data": false,
        "what_result_favors_rival": "Independent inventories reveal strong century-dependent undercoverage, and coverage-corrected provincial totals cease to peak unanimously in the 1st or 2nd century."
      }
    },
    {
      "mechanism": "Raw inscription counts may peak because the number of people, occupied urban sites, or monumental construction projects exposed to producing inscriptions was greatest in the 1st and 2nd centuries, even if the propensity to inscribe per person, site, or building project did not rise. This is an exposure-denominator mechanism rather than a distinctive epigraphic habit.",
      "why_it_explains_the_same_evidence": "Broad expansion of settlement, population, and construction during the high Empire could raise absolute counts across nearly every province simultaneously. Since the registered test compares raw provincial counts rather than rates standardized by population, occupied-site-years, or construction activity, the same denominator peak would appear in both alphabetical subsets.",
      "named_confounds": [
        "raw-count denominator effect",
        "century-varying population exposure",
        "century-varying number of occupied and excavated sites",
        "monumental construction volume"
      ],
      "discriminating_test": {
        "description": "Combine inscription counts with independent century-by-century estimates of provincial population, occupied-site-years, or datable monumental construction projects, and calculate inscriptions per exposure unit. The stated mechanism predicts that a high-imperial peak remains in the standardized inscription rate; the rival predicts that the common peak largely disappears or follows the exposure series, with approximately stable inscription propensity after normalization.",
        "computable_on_held_data": false,
        "what_result_favors_rival": "The 1st- or 2nd-century unanimity disappears after exposure standardization, while raw inscription totals closely track population, occupied-site, or construction-project counts."
      }
    }
  ],
  "no_viable_rival": false,
  "notes": "The alphabetical holdout strongly establishes a catalogue-wide geographic regularity, but it cannot by itself distinguish a historical production mechanism from dating, coverage, or denominator processes shared across the entire catalogue."
}
