Benford audits Knossos

Status: Open

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

Benford audits Knossos. Genuine Linear B tallies should be Benford-conformal; assessment records (quotas) should deviate — statistically separating what was counted from what was demanded. Falsify: digit distributions by tablet series.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

digit distributions by tablet series.

Provenance

Run: Imported conversation (verbatim harvest) · model: claude-fable-5

Origin: operator conversation with Claude Fable 5 at max effort, conducted 2026-07-03, relayed verbatim by the operator into the shepherd session on 2026-07-04. No ModelRun exists for the original generation (it happened outside the pipeline); this transcript file is the canonical capture. Transcript path: docs/generated/conjecture_harvest_fablemax_20260703.md. Model (operator-attested, not pipeline-recorded): claude-fable-5. Novelty disclaimer (verbatim, load-bearing -- rule 4): "Same caveat as before, doubled: at 100 items across all of archaeology and history, some of these will have cousins in the literature I can't check. What I can guarantee is the format — each links two things not normally linked, and each names the dataset or measurement that would kill it."

Novelty / leakage triage

no prior formulation located (search dated 2026-07-04)

Benford's law is standard in modern fraud/audit contexts, but no application to Linear B (or comparable Aegean/Near Eastern administrative tallies) distinguishing counted records from assessed quotas was located. No prior formulation located (search dated 2026-07-04). Methodological risk flagged for any future resolution: Linear B tallies are small counts spanning few orders of magnitude, so Benford conformance may be structurally unattainable regardless of honesty — a resolution must pre-check magnitude span or return inconclusive.

Hill, 'The First-Digit Phenomenon' (statistical basis) — Benford applicability conditions

Predictions

Open registered 2026-07-04

OPEN prediction (no in-house data): genuine counted Linear B tallies are closer to Benford-conformal than assessment/quota records, statistically separating counting from demanding within the same archive.

Resolution criteria: Pre-check (mandated by triage): if the magnitude span of the tally corpus covers fewer than 2 orders of magnitude, the resolution is INCONCLUSIVE BY DESIGN (Benford not applicable to narrow-span counts). If applicable: SUPPORTED if first-digit distributions of counted series are significantly closer to Benford (chi-square distance, permutation p < 0.05) than quota/assessment series within the same tablet corpus. KILLED if quota series conform as well or better.

Known priors disclosure: No in-house Linear B data. The registrant flagged at triage that small-count tallies may fail the span pre-check — this prediction may well resolve inconclusive-by-design, and that outcome must be reported as such, not as support.

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