# r2-edh-b1-04

**Claim (as registered):** Province-level date-coverage (share of inscriptions with a resolved start date) is highly heterogeneous rather than clustering around a central value: at least one eligible holdout province lands with dated-share under 35%, AND at least one lands over 95%.

**Proposed mechanism:** Date-resolution coverage is proposed to depend on province-specific epigraphic conventions and modern cataloguing depth, which vary widely and unevenly rather than clustering around any typical value.

**Scope:** Source: the Epigraphic Database Heidelberg (EDH), a catalogue of Roman-period inscriptions on stone/metal/etc. (physical objects, catalogued separately from a manuscript census). Training: the 33 provinces in the alphabetically first half of EDH's own province-code order (42,009 inscriptions). Holdout: the 33 provinces in the alphabetically second half, minus 'Provincia incerta' (EDH's own catch-all for uncertain findspots, not a real geographic unit, excluded from all arithmetic) -- 32 real provinces, 39,457 inscriptions -- landed in one complete fetch after the claim was fixed. EDH's own content has been fixed since 2021 (the cataloguing project's funding ended), so this holdout tests whether a pattern generalizes across an arbitrary alphabetical split of already-catalogued, unchanging material, not whether it predicts new discoveries. Minimum support: at least 30 landed inscriptions in a province for it to count.

**Training-side evidence:** Low end: two training provinces under 20% dated (15.49%, 18.18%). High end: several training provinces above 98% dated, one reaching exactly 100%.

**Holdout test and outcome:** Of 29 eligible holdout provinces: low end 13.40% dated (the furthest below the 35% line), high end 99.60% dated (the furthest above the 95% line).

**Status:** Survived (both extremes reproduced in the holdout).
