Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Archaeology

message: It seems to me that these titles should use endash rather than hyphen as the two elements are independent and equal, per WP:ENDASH. Any thoughts? Colonies Chris (talk) 18:47, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: As there have been no objections, I've gone ahead and made the changes. Colonies Chris (talk) 21:41, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Begazy-Dandybai culture]] and [[Talish-Mughan culture]] 

message: Hi folks, I've drafted an article where I have a conflict of interest to manage. The situation is outlined at Talk:Lowther Castle Stead, explaining the COI, and there's a link to my sandbox where I prepared the daft. The current article is just a handful of sentences long. I'd welcome any feedback on the article to check it for neutrality and tone. Richard Nevell (talk) 21:58, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed redraft of an article on a medieval castle 

message: A new IP editor has been adding this category to various articles, such as Toribio Mejía Xesspe. One problem is that the category doesn't exist; the other is, it doesn't really fit with the present scheme of archaeologist categories, which seem to be done more by country or region. All of the articles they are tagging are South American; to me, "Precolumbian" could refer to anywhere in the Americas. It isn't a terrible idea to have a category for South America in "Category:Archaeologists by region of study", or even perhaps to divide it into pre- and post-Columbian categories. Do people have suggestions about how to rationalize the categories? Or should we just delete their changes, or create the new category and live with the hodgepodge? Brianyoumans (talk) 22:16, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The wide, spreading tree of :Category:Archaeologists has many mighty limbs, including "by region of study" and "by period of study", so I don't see why we shouldn't have one (perhaps we do somewhere). We have 35 in :Category:Phoenician-punic archaeologists. We have 91 in :Category:Mesoamerican archaeologists, and cats for "Californian" and "of Baja California". Johnbod (talk) 23:10, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

text: Indeed there's :Category:Archaeologists by period of study, where a new :Category:Precolumbian archaeologists would fit perfectly. – Joe (talk) 15:47, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Precolumbian archaeologists 

message: I noticed there is a severe lack of standalone archaeology articles for each U.S. state/territory (and not one for the U.S. as a whole). Shouldn't this be remedied—especially for states with heavy on the archaeological study? The only standalone article I could find was Archaeology of Iowa, and the only list-class is List of archaeological sites in Tennessee. Most  pages redirect to that state's history or prehistory article. None make any mention of historiography. There's a golden opportunity here for content creation and expansion if anyone is interested; I am going to do ones for South Dakota, and perhaps as a project we can consider making a breakout article at Archaeology of the United States (which currently redirects to Archaeology of the Americas). – TCMemoire 16:32, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: See also archaeology by country – there's red all over the place. – Joe (talk) 15:45, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good point, and many of those redirect to history articles or even categories... Archaeology (and the historiography of it) seems to truly be a massive hole in the Wiki's coverage as a whole. This would be a huge undertaking but an important one. Maybe we could make this a focus of the WikiProject, and perhaps interest other folks from other projects to help out? Something like an edit-a-thon? – TCMemoire 20:36, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

text: Imo modern political boundaries are a poor way of dividing up archaeology, especially sub-national ones. Johnbod (talk) 23:03, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I am aware of a couple or so sources covering archaeology in Florida, and their coverage of topics that are not confined to Florida is truncated at the state line. I think it would be more useful to write about "schools" of archaeology. Sometimes, national boundaries do separate approaches to archaeology, but I think it would be rare to find such differences between states in the US. Donald Albury 23:52, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: (ec)Yes; I'll allow exceptions like "A of Hawaii" or Alaska, but generally achie cultures span several states, and a section in "History of Foo" is probably best. User:Wetman used to talk scornfully of Dinosaurs of Minnesota - whether this actually ever existed I don't know. I'd say the same for flora and fauna articles. Johnbod (talk) 09:00, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

text: I agree that the US states are not a priority. But the situation there is a bit special, with them being recent creations of a colonial power. In Europe and West Asia, dividing the archaeological record along national lines is the rule rather than the exception. – Joe (talk) 08:59, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: It is? Italy, Turkey & maybe Spain, but not Ireland, German-speaking countries, the Low countries or Scandinavia. Nearly all modern countries except Egypt are "recent creations" really. Obviously much detailed records of sites etc are done nationally, but the kind of overviews our articles should be involve trans-national cultures. Johnbod (talk) 09:09, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose it depends on what type of coverage you're talking about. If you want to describe how e.g. the Ertebølle culture gave way to Funnelbeaker, then I agree that'd be better off in something like Prehistoric Scandinavia. If you want to talk about the history of the discipline, key figures, institutions and legal frameworks, sites of particular heritage value, etc., then I think you'd have a much easier time separating the archaeology of Denmark from the archaeology of Sweden. Also in West Asia: Ancient Levant, but archaeology of Jordan and archaeology of Syria, and so on. Don't know about further afield. – Joe (talk) 09:30, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: That sort of article should be "A in Foo" rather than "A of Foo", imo, the latter covering the stuff found and the former the people finding it. Johnbod (talk) 09:39, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but I took a look through all the existing archaeology and prehistory of/in articles recently and didn't find a single one that consistently made that distinction. Since we have so few, I figure it makes sense to start building coverage in one article (archaeology of seems the most common) and then split if needed later. – Joe (talk) 09:46, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archaeology of the U.S. and by U.S. state 

message: I started a page for this research area, since its distinct from queer archaeology and more specific than gender archaeology Lajmmoore (talk) 11:57, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I am curious what that topic would cover. I know there are occasional findings that do not fit the traditional division of labor narratives, such as a woman being buried with armor and weapons, but how much discussion has there been in reliable sources describing such as "transgender"? We have to be careful about projecting modern concepts onto historical or archaeological evidence, and must rely on solid reliable sources. Donald Albury 16:47, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, which is why I thought starting an article that provides an short introduction to subject, as well as providing links to a wide range of papers across periods would be useful for everyone curious Lajmmoore (talk) 17:33, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transgender archaeology 

message: Our class developed a new list on archaeologically attested women for a WikiEdu project. I added it to the Project:Archaeology using our List's talk page, but is there something else we need to do to get it linked over here? It's also been added to the Category:Archaeology.
Here it is: [of Archaeologically Attested Women from the Ancient Mediterranean Region]
--EtruscanMayhem (talk) 21:08, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi . What a great idea, thanks for letting us know about it. The  template you put on the talk page marks the article as of interest to this project and is all that's needed. – Joe (talk) 13:49, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Great, thanks! EtruscanMayhem (talk) 13:56, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  New List on Archaeologically Attested Women 

message: Hello all. The article on Amnya complex describes it as the oldest fort in the world. I've suggested a change of wording on the talk page, in case anyone would like to contribute their thoughts on how to phrase the claims. Richard Nevell (talk) 19:44, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Amnya complex]] 

message: Looking over various Wikipedia articles, it seems standard to describe the skeletons of individual prehistoric humans in the present tense as is done in Cheddar man, Magdalenian Girl, Tianyuan man etc. Under this understanding, I changed the writing for the Arlington Springs Man (a 13,000 year old skeleton known from the Channel Islands of California) to describe it as a skeleton in the present tense.  reverted me with the edit summary  , which I consider to be rude and insulting, given the current wide use of the present tense to describe prehistoric human remains in Wikipedia articles. There's no reason to treat the remains of ancient Native Americans any different than those of other prehistoric humans, so I think having a broader discussion regarding the stylings used to describe the remains of prehistoric people is appropriate. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:15, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I expect that some editors active at Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America will want to be involved in the discussion. I know I'm not the only editor following both projects. Donald Albury 21:52, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I will do so. I should note that I don't have a strong opinion either way regarding this issue, only that there should be consistency between the treatment of articles of Native American and non-Native American human remains. I should note that a complete list of such articles can be found at Category:Homo_sapiens_fossils (I would support renaming this category, as it includes obvious non-fossils like human mummies). Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:11, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "was" vs "is" for individual ancient human skeletons 

message: Hello, the article for Longyou Caves is poorly written and sourced, but appears to refer to a real archaeological site.  The sources are weak and somewhat suspicious, repeating a claimed age that does not appear supported by any scholarly work I could find (see talk).  They also all refer to a vague story about its discovery in 1992, and how it was unknown until then, but other sources seem to refer to a similar cave in the same town that possibly goes by the same name and that seemingly has a well attested history.  And the surrounding area appears to be full of caves, but sources seem to distinguish these caves, but again with little support.
An expert that could evaluate the sources, locate other reliable sources, or put these caves in context would be a big help in improving this article.  The article seems to be the basis of a lot of pop-pseudoscience articles suggesting aliens and whatnot, which is doing the opposite of what Wikipedia should be doing. Carleas (talk) 00:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Longyou Caves