Portal talk:Archaeology

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Portal:Archaeology page.
This talk page is for the Portal about Archaeology. Ensure this portal's details are listed in the Portal directory.
For discussion about Portals generally, please see the WikiProject on Portals.

There's a real lack of archaeology articles that made it to Featured status. Has anyone got any candidates that could be put forward or potential candidates that would benefit from a collaboration of the week type polish? adamsan 12:20, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] List of years in archaeology

I hope this wil be a place where this matter can recieve attention from fellow interested Wikipedians: Note that the List of years in archaeology and associated sub-articles has been listed for deletion; see: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of years in archaeology. Personally I think the stubby state of those articles are more representative of the still stubby and spotty coverage Wikipedia has of the history of archaeology rather than this subject being unfit for timelines similar to a number of other topics so treated here, and therefore have voted to keep and helped expand some of the articles. Whatever your opinion, feedback from those interested in the subject is welcome. -- Infrogmation 18:09, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

The conclusion was no consensus to delete. I have been trying to remember to populate the relevant years whenever I add or update an article. The teaching of archaeology (at least in UK, I dont know about the rest of the world), utilises the history of archaeology quite strongly, so if this is populated, we will eventually generate a useful resource! Viv Hamilton 15:03, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Media attention

From the current British Archaeology:

[Wikipedia] contains plenty of archaeological material, including a dedicated portal to a veritable parallel universe of related information (created by users, the quality of its archaeology is largely up to archaeologists)...With so much good stuff, could it be that some of the major organisations appear not to bother about their own presentations because they could not compete?

From Gateway to Information Paradise - British Archaeology May-June 2006 p 38. adamsan 21:10, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archaeoastronomy

I thought I'd flag a note on the Archaeoastronomy talk page about a possible major re-write of the article. I know I could just re-write anyway given the revert button / edit facilties, but I thought it polite to put it up for discussion seeing as it's my first serious bit of editing on Wikipedia. --Alunsalt 11:09, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categorising Categories

I think the categories could do with some tidying, for example, a super-category of archaeology by geography could collect up European.., African.., ..of the Americas etc. There's already a category of periods and stages in archaeology, so Roman, Pleistocene etc should be under that. A super-category of Archaeology of Material Culture could colect up lithics, megalithics, incriptions, artefacts and artefact types. What does the rest of the project think? Viv Hamilton 16:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds nice and simple when you put it like that, but these things tend to get nice and complicated the deeper you get into them. If you can give it the time - go for it. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 16:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've tidied up the categories on the sub-category pages, but (not recategorised articles as yet) does anyone know if there is a way to automatically generate a category tree for the portal page? Can it be improved further? Here is the list of the 21 top level categories, the .. are where there are more than one sub-categories:

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Also

Viv Hamilton 19:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Matching main articles and categories

As part of the category clean-up, I've been matching main articles with categories. Our list of key articles on the project page, differs from our list of categories on the portal page (and as tidied up above). We have a category for Category:Methods and principles in archaeology but in the key articles, we break this into Archaeological practice, Methods and principles in archaeology and Archaeological science. Would it be better to change the categories to match the article structure? Note that Methods and principles in archaeology doesn't exist, perhaps this should be Archaeological methods or Archaeological techniques - since the principles part is listed under Archaeological practice. Consensus please? If we do change the categories, does anyone know how to rename a category, or is it a case of creating one with the new name? Viv Hamilton 10:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I would have no issue with an article titled Methods and Principles in Archaeology. Archaeological Science feels to me like a different topic, overlapping perhaps, but worthy of an article in its own right. Archaeological methods are not always archaeological science strictly speaking, I don't think. The content of archaeological practice would probably need to be reviewed to decided how best to deal with it. One possibility is perhaps to remove the principles section from there and put it in the methods and principles article. Silverthorn 15:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I have done a fair bit of work in Category:Methods and principles in archaeology over the last week and see no reason why everything in Archaeological practice, Archaeological science and Methods and principles in archaeology shouldn't be combined. I think your right the cats seem dysfunctional. to this end i have bben working on making it a coherent whole. the rationale for creating Dating methodology (archaeology) amongst other heavy edits and new articles was to try and draw together the myriad pieces on various methods, many of which do not seem to explain how they are used in archaeology, also to try and patch over some obvious admissions such as the concept of residual information or finds, which is a pretty central concept in dating and excavation. the methodology cat in general could do with being more detailed and comprehensive compared with the introductory articles on archaeology. while most users may want to know about Mesopotamia etc. after a while they may come to ask "how do they know that culture x existed 3000 yrs ago" or "how exactly does that process work" . I am also trying to avoid creating small articles on every term without some larger pieces on how these various concepts work together. its ok creating apiece on this or that form of dating or technique but they should be designed in such a way they can be brought together to form a larger block of interconnected knowledge especially in areas such as methodology and even more so in a inter-disciplinarian science like archaeology. the function of [[Category:Methods and principles in archaeology]] doesn,t seem to work IMO as a tool for understanding how archaeology functions in detail as a discipline in its current form. So to this end i working on a framework of articles that attempt to link together in a logical way. my weakness is my writing style is appalling along with my spelling. I also have a limited time frame for substantial wiki editing at the moment due to injury but shortly i will not be able to put as much time in. I have done a fair bit of reorganising stuff but would appreciate some feedback and follow up if people have the time cheersBoris 13:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] thoughts on topic close to my heart

I am not unhappy with trying to firm up terms in the methodology of archaeology to make it more scientific, not least so cross referencing all the different terms with-in wiki makes sense.. I ahve thought about this for a few days and since this wiki is for those who are not in archaeology (yet) the best approach to teaching methodology via the written word is to use concepts of fundamental units of understanding such as context and build them up into ever larger units of understanding, note this applies to finds and assemblages where single finds become associated with other finds and in turn build into larger units of interpretation such as cultures or industries.. this reflects also on the concepts of stratification shown in my iedits on how the excavation article should be slanted. archaeology in a practical sense is the building of small bits of information in logical steps into ever larger ones. terms like; context, feature, layer, group, and phase are all increasing units of understanding or interpretation.. therefore i propose we structure the articles so the reader is lead through this increasing size concept via the links. there is a problem with a clash of terminology across the atlantic which is tedious to say the least. modern archaeological method in its closest form to scientific endevour is this building process of clustering and association Boris 18:37, 19 October 2006 (UTC) ps my writing style and skills suck

[edit] Editors Wanted

Anybody out there interested in helping out updating this page, its kind of annoying doing all the work on this thing --Mad Historian3 23:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

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