Six Sigma at Cuzco

Status: Prior

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)

Six Sigma at Cuzco. Joins statistical process control (control charts and capability indices) to Andean ceramics: Inca state pottery was tolerance-controlled output, so dimensional variance is a direct index of administrative reach, tightening toward the capital and loosening down the provincial hierarchy.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

For imperial-style aryballoi, the coefficient of variation of rim diameter and of height within a size class is <=6% for Cuzco-region production but >=12% for distant provincial imitations, with CV increasing monotonically with distance from Cuzco across at least four regions (Cuzco heartland, Titicaca basin, Ecuador highlands, coastal enclaves); co-occurring local non-state wares show no comparable gradient, isolating administration rather than potter skill as the cause.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: published metric datasets of provenienced aryballoi (museum and excavation catalogues). A flat CV-versus-distance profile, or provincial CVs matching Cuzco within 2 percentage points, kills it.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Generated by a fresh Fable-tier instance at maximum effort with generation-first blindness (no repo reads, no searches, no DB queries); title list supplied at launch, titles only, no verdicts or dossiers seen; prompt pre-committed in docs/GOAL_CONJECTURES_BATCH2_20260705.md (7e55eb8). Novelty unverified by construction.

Novelty / leakage triage

Leaked (already exists in the literature)

The standardization-gradient-from-Cuzco is an established archaeometric finding: Lara & Bray show Ecuadorian provincial Inca-style ceramics are more standardized than local wares but LESS uniform than Cuzco's, with distant production 'less regulated'; Cuzco-region petrography documents centralized quality control. The published metric is compositional rather than the conjecture's dimensional CV — a refinement, not a new connection.

Lara & Bray, 'Imperial Inca-style pottery from Ecuador: INAA and ceramic petrography' — The gradient finding, compositional metric

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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