Talk:Port an Eilean Mhòir boat burial

File:Ardnamurchan axe, by Charlotte Tooze.ogv Nominated for Deletion

 * Source information added. --sbp (talk) 19:16, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Renaming
When I created this article, I did it on analogy with the Snape boat grave article name, and because I found more results on the web for "boat grave" than "ship grave". Since creating the article, however, two facts have come to light which I think suggest that the article ought to be moved to Swordle Bay ship burial or something similar—and, by analogy, Snape boat grave to Snape ship burial. The first is that there is another possible Viking ship burial on the Ardnamurchan peninsula. If that other site, which is currently lost, is rediscovered, then it too would deserve an entry on Wikipedia. In that case, Ardnamurchan boat grave would actually need to be a disambiguation page; it could refer to either of the sites. The second reason is that "boat grave" is not the standard way to refer to sites of this nature: the Canmore site, for example, categorises them as "SHIP BURIAL (VIKING)", and the Wikipedia article about ship burials is called Ship burials.

For these reasons, I think we should move the article. I suggest Swordle Bay ship burial as a specific enough name for the location. Several sites mention Swordle Bay as the name of the bay, but the OS map uses the Scottish Gaelic name Port an Eilean Mhòir. I'm not sure, therefore, how official "Swordle Bay" is as a name; certainly there is a Swordle Farm there, and Swordle House. The next most reasonable name would use the nearest town, i.e. Ockle ship burial. If there are no objections to Swordle Bay ship burial, though, I'll move it there. --sbp (talk) 14:41, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * According to the literature, there seems to be a 3rd ship burial in Arnamurchan:
 * "The locality on the Firth of Lorne, opposite the Isle of Mull and not very distant from the boat grave at Gordon Bay in Ardnamurchan, seems quite plausible as the site of a Viking settlement."
 * This book was published in 1919, prior to the Cul na Crois discovery (1924): "Viking antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland", Volume 6, Videnskabelige forskningsfond, Haakon Shetelig
 * --Mais oui! (talk) 17:18, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I suspect that one is actually the one we already documented, at Cul na Crois, Ardnamurchan. On the Canmore entry it says that the site is also known as Sgeir A' Chaolais and Gorten Bay. Gorten Bay looks like it was simply anglicised as Gordon Bay in your source. That doesn't explain the date discrepancy, though. --sbp (talk) 17:33, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * My mistake! The book was published in 1954, but funded by the Norwegian 'Scientific Research Fund of 1919' (that was the formal name, incl date). --Mais oui! (talk) 17:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The Ordnance Survey is the recognised authority on geographical names, and it calls the bay Port an Eilean Mhóir (note the acute accent, not grave). --Mais oui! (talk) 17:36, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The OS map, naughtily copied here, used an acute accent, not grave. --Mais oui! (talk) 17:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The OS map that I've been using, from the OS website, uses a grave accent:
 * [[File:OS Mhòir.png]]
 * As far as I can tell, Mhóir is an archaic form, and Mhòir is the modern form. --sbp (talk) 18:00, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Fairy nuff. I've just found this too. The OS must have had a change of mind at some point, so we'd better use the most up to date spelling.--Mais oui! (talk) 18:05, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * "boat grave" is a perfectly valid term, and given as an alternative name in our article ship burial. The distinction lies in the size of the vessel, and here and at Snape this is pretty small to be a "ship" at around 15ft. Please don't (Sbp) go round renaming other articles without discussion. The name of this article should be reconsidered when more RS exist.  Johnbod (talk) 18:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I only renamed one other article, and that was after the discussion here was concluded. (I didn't rename the present article, only started the discussion about it.) The other article that I renamed is presumably consistent if the present article is named correctly. Since you now argue that this article is not named correctly, we can open up the debate again. --sbp (talk) 18:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, only the AFP story refers to the present vessel as a "ship". All other sources refer to it as a boat. The RCAHMS categorise the Scar, Sanday, find, which was of a similar size at "6.5m long, 1.6m wide", as "SHIP BURIAL (VIKING)", which was a motivation for suggesting the move of this article to …ship burial. The entry for that find does, however, admittedly use the term "boat" consistently in all places except for the category. The tooltip for the category says "A burial in which the body is placed in or covered by a ship or boat, or within a setting of stones in the shape of a ship." This seems to mean that their use of SHIP covers ship or boat for convenience, which is reasonable enough. In that case, it seems you are right—that …boat burial would be more appropriate here. Perhaps you'd like to take the WP:BOLD step yourself? --sbp (talk) 19:07, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * One counter-argument that comes to mind is that if …ship burial is used consistently across all such articles, then we won't run against any Sorites paradox problems, i.e. around at what size a boat becomes a ship. Boat of Theseus? But this probably isn't as strong an argument as using whatever the prevailing literature uses. --sbp (talk) 19:28, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

1924 ship burial: "so the nature of the finds cannot be determined with certainty"
Is this actually true? According to the RCAHMS the 1924 finds (or at least some of them) are in the possession of the West Highland Museum in Fort William and in private possession (Mr R Cameron, Kentra).

So, presumably they are available for inspection by respected authorities, so their nature could be confirmed or refuted (if anyone cared to undertake the task).--Mais oui! (talk) 18:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I've written to the West Highland Museum in an attempt to find out. I'll note the details of any response here. --sbp (talk) 18:33, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably straying too deep into WP:OR, but we'll be lenient! ;) --Mais oui! (talk) 18:47, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Location
There are no published figures for the site location yet, but they will appear in due course on the Royal Commission website. They're not published on the Royal Commission website until a site is fully excavated, to deter thieves and vandals. Once they appear on that site, or in any published source from the site archaeologists or media, then we can cite it; we can restore the map and exact coordinates. Otherwise, it comes under WP:NOR. --Sbp (talk) 10:04, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Take a look at File:Ardnamurchan boat site, by Jon Haylett.jpg - a picture of the site by a local person which clearly states the location. It's such a clear picture that you can locate it precisely from satellite pictures on Google Maps. From the reporting, it seems apparent that the site has been fully excavated. One other problem with removing the location is that it's still in the article title but isn't explained anywhere else... Prioryman (talk) 16:45, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I admit that I uploaded that photograph, and added the location information based on my own original research. The team have mentioned that until it's on the Royal Commission website, one should not consider the excavation period closed. They've also mentioned that 1km precision on the location (represented by the 2 d.p. lat/lon figure) is in reasonable congruence with the information contained in their present media releases. In other words, there have been considerations. On the title problem, I believe that the the Scottish Gaelic part means "Bay of the Big Island". I'd like to stress again that once the Royal Commission publishes the figures, it will then be suitable, for more than one reason, to add the precision—and your excellent map—back to the article. We worked hard on this article, and this careful curation to keep the location information in strict parallel with what has been officially published is part of that hard work. --Sbp (talk) 20:52, 27 October 2011 (UTC)