Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mesoamerica/Guidelines

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WP:MESO Guidelines, standards and conventions – Discussion page
This is a talkpage associated with WikiProject Mesoamerica. This talkpage is for discussion relating to editing guidelines, standards and conventions of relevance to Mesoamerican articles.
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This looks good to me. Good work. -- Infrogmation 21:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Mayan names for Maya sites

There was some discussion a while back on Talk:Chichen Itza about following the Corpus of Maya Inscriptions to use Mayan language rules of accenting for Mayan language site names and Spanish language rules for Spanish language names, hence "Chichen Itza" rather than "Chichén Itzá". This seems a reasonable way to set the guideline to me. At present, our names for Maya sites are inconsistant. Thoughts? -- Infrogmation 15:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

On a seperate related issue relevent to the same header, as a number of Pre-Colombian names have been rediscovered with recent epigraphic work, how should we handle this when the name is different from the one (eg, Uaxactun)? -- Infrogmation 15:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Re the first point, I'd be supportive of the approach taken with the Chichen Itza example, and for cases where the site's name has a clear Mayan language origin to use the non-accented version in preference to how the site's name would otherwise be marked by Spanish speakers. Sites where the name originates from Spanish (Dos Pilas, San Andrés, etc) could be accented if required, since that's what we do with place-names like Yucatán and Mérida, even though these names might be familiar in english as well (with or without accented chars, and even though yucatan has a non-Spanish etymology). I suppose it could be argued that this is not standard english practice to follow in an english-language encyclopaedia, but I think it does give a guide to pronunciation and seems to be done for all but the more commonplace of toponyms. (As a side note, an orthography more in line with the revised Academia one would be chich'en itza, from ch'en -"well (of water)").
On the second point, I suppose there are two circumstances to consider for sites with names deriving from Mesoamerican languages - (a) where the site's name is written in the 'old' orthography (eg Uaxactun vs the updated Waxaktun), and (b) where epigraphy has recovered an ancient name for the site differing from the present one (again, per the example you note of the decipherments at Uaxactun).
For article titles in case (a), references seem to be divided on whether they "update" the name from the original orthography, although I guess a majority still use the 'old' forms where it is reasonably well-established, so maybe we should be guided by "most common usage" than strict correctness. However, I wouldn't be too bothered if (for Maya sites leastways) we settled on adopting the revised orthography for these placenames as well.
For sites in case (b), we should definitely give prominence to any recent decipherments, but I guess these names are generally not as yet well-known enough to serve as the articles' titles. Some of these would still be tentative decipherments. I could be convinced otherwise, though.
In either case we need to give all the name variants up-front in the articles. Perhaps it would be useful also to start building a list of conventions for individual places and people, and cover these off on a one-by-one basis. Unfortunately even the revised Academia Mayan language system is a bit inconsistent, particularly on whether to indicate long vowels (Tuluum - Tulum) and glottal stops.--cjllw | TALK 06:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Site name disambigs

Probably could do with a guideline on how to name articles for sites where the site's name is ambiguous. Two options spring to mind:

  1. Sitename, Region - eg. Jaina, Campeche
  2. Sitename (culturename site) - eg. San Bartolo (Maya site)

Each have their advantages, format #1 tells us where it is located (but is not distinguishable from contemporary settlements), while format #2 more readily identifies it as an archaeological site of one of the Mesoamerican cultures (but unclear what to do if there is no clear identification of a particular culture with the site- eg for archaic or paleo-indian sites; maybe in such instances use Sitename (Mesoamerican site)?).

Any thoughts, or other options which could be considered?--cjllw | TALK 02:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Hm. I suggest we adopt one of those options as our usual way, and keep the other as a "plan B" in case of unusual disambiguation cases where the first option may be problematic. Might we run into problems with Mesoamerican sites of the same name at different locations? -- Infrogmation 15:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'd think that there would likely be a couple of Mesoamerican sites with the same name or usual referrent, but are in different subregions.

How about the following hierarchy of dab convention choices:

  1. Sitename –(first choice/general standard is unqualified, if there is no notable other usage for Sitename.
  2. Sitename (Culturename site) – if there is an alternate notable use of Sitename.
    • if the cultural attribution for the site is undetermined, Sitename (Mesoamerican site) may be used.
  3. Sitename, Regionname (Culturename site) – for those (presumably few in number) cases where there is another similarly-named site for that culture.

It may not be overall a significant-enough point, but I prefer the (X site) form of dab over the (X, Regionname) one so as to avoid possible confusion with contemporary place names of the same name (eg 'Tulum' could be the arch. site as well as the nearby village, tho' both are covered within the present article). A number of sites take their common name from nearby communities, and vice versa.--cjllw | TALK 03:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguating structures, inscriptions, etc

While not a noticeable problem now, if we start to grow the number of articles on individual Mesoamerican buildings, structures, inscriptions, etc we will need to determine a common method for disambiguating these. Many structures and monumental inscriptions are given rather prosaic names (eg Stela 12, Structure E-VII-sub, "Great Temple") which barely distinguish them from others in the same location, let alone across a number of sites. Presumably the dab part of the title would be the site name, but which order would be best:

  1. Name, Site - eg. Lintel 24, Yaxchilan, High Temple, Lamanai
  2. Site, Name - eg. La Mojarra Stela 1

Option #2 has the apparent advantage that structures/objects from the same site would be alphasorted together if they are placed in the same category, but this may not be a strong enough reason to prefer it. Any other suggestions?--cjllw | TALK 02:45, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

As an additional comment, perhaps we also need a guideline about whether or when to create articles on individual structures in the first place- something like, make sure the building is covered in the main site's article first, and only break off into a separate article when there's sufficient material to do so, or when the site's article is becoming rather crowded. Possible exceptions to this might be for structures we might expect to be reasonably well-known (eg Temple of the Foliated Cross). Any ideas?--cjllw | TALK 03:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Some naming conveniton would be a good idea. I suggest we go with option 2 [site, name] unless a good reason is brought up not to. -- Infrogmation 15:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] IPA transcription (proposed)

  • Guideline/convention: When transcribing glottalized consonants to the IPA, the nonstandard "explosive" apostrophe will be used, and not the more correct "creaky" diacritic.
  • explanation/rationale: This is easier to write and (in screen fonts) to read, and corresponds to the ALMG use of apostrophe for glottalized consonants.

that's my proposal. --Homunq 21:56, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Homunq, by nonstandard explosive apostrophe I gather you mean simply   '  ...?
What would be the alternative grapheme? And in which context(s)- formal IPA transcription, or in the body of the running text in general?--cjllw | TALK 02:00, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Calendrical Designations

I would like to suggest that the use of CE and BCE be substituted for AD and BC when discussing pre-Columbian subjects as it has become standard academic practice and is widely understood; if anyone feels that confusion will arise as a result we could consider linking the CE and BCE designations to Common Era on major pages (i.e. Tikal) that attract a larger non-academic audience. --DuendeThumb 07:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)