Talk:San Buenaventura de Potano

24.250.203.88 (talk) 20:52, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Status of article
A couple of days ago I removed a fair amount of material from this article. The location of the mission (and of the original town of Potano) has recently come into dispute, with competing claims for archaeological sites. The primary published source on the dispute is at On-line as. This article was degenerating into attempts to disparage the credentials of the competing discoverers. As all we have at this point is news coverage of what amount to press releases, with no report published in a peer-reviewed journal, I believe we need to be very restrained in reporting this dispute, and particularly, we must adhere to the policy in Biographies of living persons. While more may be said about the dispute in this article, all material must respect our policy on Biographies of living persons. -- Donald Albury 14:12, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Visita Apalo or Apula
Gathering some sources for "Apalo/Apula". A mission station called "Apalo" was listed by Father Oré in 1616, 2-1/2 days walk from the mission San Antonio de Anacape/Enacape. LeMoyne placed "Appalou" just to the northeast of Potano.[] []


 * Milanich: San Buenaventura may have been at the Richardson site, site of the main Potano town in 1564-1565. Visita Apalo, established by Baltasar Lopez 1597 or later, may also have been at Richardson site.[]


 * De Soto passed "large" town called Apalu/Hapaluya west of Suwannee. Apalo mission between San Antonio de Anacape and Potano missions by 1616, maybe south of Lake Orange.[]


 * Cacique of Apalau visited St. Augustine March 28, 1601, together with Cacique of Mautina of Potano and the heir of the Cacique of Potano. San Buenaventura "founded on recently reoccupied site of the town burned in 1584". San Buenaventura probably identical to Apalo visited by Oré in 1616.[] -- Donald Albury 18:17, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Request for Comment

As I have done on the Hernando de Soto page, I am requesting any archaeologists or historians who are familiar with the archaeological sites at issue to come to a consensus on the evidence before further edits to this page are made. Boyer's work is peer-reviewed, while White's is not, and, as noted on the Hernando de Soto Talk page, there is an increasing consensus in the professional community that the so-called "White Ranch site" is dubious at best and an outright fraud and hoax at worst. I would request that editors review and comment on the validity of the issues here and attempt to reach a consensus.24.250.203.88 (talk) 20:52, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: January 2016 - a peer-reviewed journal article by Boyer, published in the Florida Anthropologist, has been published. It was noted earlier by Donald Albury that such a report needed to be published prior to any further definitive statement could be made about which of the sites claimed for San Buenaventura was more likely. None of the sources which White has presented are peer-reviewed, and the Florida Division of Historical Resources report used by White has had a letter signed by a large group of professional archaeologists indicating that White's claims about 8MR3538 are not verifiable. Accordingly, I have edited the main article to reflect the peer-reviewed paper, and left the newspaper article referring to White's claims and the dispute. In the event any peer-reviewed material is published by White, this and related articles should be updated to reflect those sources as well.Veritas20132014 (talk) 01:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: I have deleted materials from this page that have been posted by users which were blocked for sockpuppetry - see the investigations listed for "LisaWalsh" and related accounts. These materials also violated Wikipedia's policies on attacks on individuals. If there is, in fact, a peer-reviewed source for the finds claimed for the "White Ranch Site", it should be added; if there is no such work, the materials currently listed for the article should remain.

And a word of clarification: a peer-reviewed source means a professional journal article, or a conference paper, which has been through the process of review by multiple archaeologists with expertise in their specific areas. Material filed with the Florida Division of Historical Resources is not peer-reviewed; and, as noted above, there are issues with the materials filed about the "White Ranch Site" signed by multiple archaeologists.Veritas20132014 (talk) 02:56, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

International Journal of Archaeology
An article from this "journal" was added recently and then removed by another editor. The journal fails our criteria for reliable sources. ] Doug Weller  talk 15:19, 13 November 2016 (UTC)