User:C99L35/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Gona, Ethiopia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because I feel that a lot of improvement can still be done on it, despite another student having created it. I think I can take the article from a stub that doesn't engage with some of the newer debates about the site and the stone tools and also provide more detail on the fossils and the relationship between the archaeological finds and human evolution.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section
Overall, the lead section of the article provides an overview of the content that is representative of the article in its current state. I envision that I will reconfigure the lead section of the article substantially based on my proposed revisions for the individual sections. Something specific to the lead section that I intend to change is that Gona is presented as an archaeological site when it is a project study area that encompasses a number of archaeological sites and areas where hominin fossils have been discovered. In the case of Busidima North (BSN12) and Dana Aoule North (DAN5) Homo erectus fossils were discovered in association with stone tool assemblages. Providing readers with the understanding that Gona encompasses multiple archaeological sites with stone tool assemblages is important in the context of the research done on the Gona assemblages related to social learning. The lead section also contains issues that are borne out in content of the topic sections of the article. I will now move to these content related issues.

Content of the Topic Sections
Most of the information in the geography section is taken from an excerpt of a chapter in Ethiopian Archaeology which explains that Oldowan lithic assemblages occur in the Rift Valley. Finneran writes: “the two major zones of exploration are in the northeast (Afar; Middle Awash) and the southwest (Omo)”. The main issue in the content of the geography section is the combination of this information and the image that accompanies the section. The image is a is a map of Ethiopia which is captioned “Map of Ethiopia demarcating the Afar and Awash regions”. The map in question is primarily a political map that shows Ethiopia’s regional states. This could create confusion because the editor(s) of the page have referred to Afar, Awash and Omo as regions and put them in juxtaposition with the regional states based on the inclusion of the map. Afar, Middle Awash, and Omo are geographic regions, not political ones so using a political map is not appropriate. To correct this confusion, I would remove the image of the map and link to the Wikipedia pages for the Afar Depression, Middle Awash Valley, and Lower Valley of the Omo, so it is apparent these are Rift Valleys. A similar issue occurs in the lead section where Hadar and Middle Awash are referred to as regions. I would change the wording, so it was clear that Hadar and Middle Awash are research areas near Gona.

The other content issue in the geography section is there is an instance were the information provided is not attributable to the cited source. The page references a press release from the University of Michigan about Semaw et al. (2020) as the source for the information that “to the north of Gona is the Mille-Bati Road, and the As Bole drainage system lies to the South”. This information is not from the press release, and it is also not from the article that the press release was about. The main discussion of the Asbole river basin that I have been able to find thus far is in Quade et al (2004). I will add this citation to the information about the Asbole river. The Mille-Bati Road is not mentioned in any of the sources on the Wikipedia page, but upon cursory research this is a major roadway in Ethiopia. Personally, I don’t see this as very relevant to the geography of Gona and will likely remove it unless I discover further information that warrants it’s inclusion.

The paleoanthropology section of the article main content gaps relate to not including a discussion of the “Gona pelvis” and not including information about the Homo erectus fossils described in Semaw et al. (2020). The Homo erectus fossils first described in Semaw et al. (2020) has undergone further study by Baab et al. (2022). Including all available information about these resent Homo erectus fossil finds and their implications for scientific understanding of Homo erectus dimorphism will close the gap created by the lack of information about Homo erectus fossils at Gona currently occurring on the page. In addition to adding information about Homo erectus fossils I will also need to address the citation of Haile-Selassie et al. (2004). This article is cited about the statement: “The teeth were used to discern the species based on the distinctive wear pattern and morphology of both the upper canine and the lower P3 (third premolar)” This information is from Semaw et al. (2005), which is the reference for the sentence directly proceeding this one. I will make sure to change this inaccurate citation.

The geology section of the article does not properly cite the source using Wikipedia’s referencing system. The article that is improperly cited, Quade et al. (2004), also speaks to paleoenvironmental reconstruction and the geological and paleoenvironmental context of Gona is expanded on in Quade et al. (2008). There is also a recent article discussion paleoclimatic reconstruction using evidence from Gona. Including information about paleoenvironment and climate provides context that helps to support behavioral inference. This would be important because much of the work on Oldowan social transmission and the meaning of Oldowan assemblages has used assemblages from Gona, which I will discuss at length in the stone tool section. I think as I continue to work on including information about paleoecology and paleoclimate in the geology section, I will have to make a decision about if paleoclimate and ecology research should be a separate section or not given that the only source being pulled from concerning the geology on the current page is interested in the geology of Gona as a way to reconstruct the paleoenvironment in addition to providing chronology via stratigraphy.

The zooarchaeology section of the article opens by providing a definition of zooarchaeology and explaining the importance of faunal remains in behavioral and dietary reconstruction in a general sense. I do not think that this opening part of the section is entirely necessary because much of the same information is available on the zooarchaeology Wikipedia page and is not directly related to Gona. The main part of this topic section addresses the cut marked bone at Gona in the context of behavioral reconstruction of butchery practices. I feel like this information could be collapsed into the stone tool section. The evidence of cut-marked bone is one line of evidence that gives insight into the behavior of early toolmakers. The stone tool section will focus on the ways that the Gona stone tool assemblage has been employed to reconstruct behavior, social learning, and cognition.

The stone tool section of the article currently focuses on dating of the stone tool assemblages and stone tool typology. While this information is important, it does not provide a detailed overview of the sites where stone tool assemblages have been recovered and the research that has been done on the Gona Oldowan assemblages that has provided insight into the social and behavioral aspects of the Oldowan, especially in regard to social learning and cultural transmission. For the section on the Oldowan I would begin by reworking some of the information in the first paragraph of the stone tool section to provide more detail about the Oldowan assemblages. I would also get rid of the statement that Gona has the earliest Oldowan assemblages, because both Plummer et al. (2023) and Braun et al. (2019) have both published older dates for the Oldowan in the past few years. I would mention the controversies around the Ledi-Geraru assemblage dates but would present Gona as historically being the oldest instance of Oldowan technology. I would then move into a discussion of the meaning of the Gona assemblages and how they have been used to understand to explore the meaning of the Oldowan in terms of behavior, cognition, and social learning. To address these aspects, I will rely on Stout et al. (2005), Stout et al. (2010) , and Stout et al. (2019) among others. I will also bring in evidence of cut-marked bone and butchery practices via Dominguez-Rodrigo et al. (2005) and Semaw et al. (2003). I will then move into a discussion of the Acheulean at Gona focusing on the cooccurrence of Oldowan and Acheulean tool types and the behavioral implications of that cooccurrence. I do not feel the final paragraph discussing Mary Leakey’s stone tool typologies is necessary for the page. These typologies are discussed on the Oldowan Industry Wiki page. I will retain some of the information specific to Gona presented in this paragraph in my earlier discussion of the Oldowan assemblages.

Writing, Images, and Talk Page
The writing itself quite choppy. The style comes off as more of a summary of individual references as opposed to a synthesis of all the information presented in an organized fashion. To correct this, I will use a technique called reverse outlining to provide organization and flow to any content that I am not otherwise changing. This technique consists of taking an already written paper (in this case it will be the individual topics) and putting the information into an outline. This will help me access where the information is coming from and will allow me to rearrange ideas, so they flow more seamlessly, providing the writing with a more cohesive structure.

In terms of images, I would like to include some examples of stone tools from the Oldowan and the Acheulean if possible. I notice that there is one person on wikicommons who has contributed multiple images to the Oldowan Industry page. However, these images are not of stone tool artifacts specifically from Gona, although I think providing some visual aid might be helpful regardless of the provenance of the specific artifact, if it is similar to artifacts that are from Gona sites. Unfortunately, I do not think I will be able to add images of fossils from Gona as they are under copyright. I would also like to create a map of the different sites and fossil finds at the Gona project area.

The talk page of the article is not active and has not been since a student worked on this page in 2021. The article is rated as stub class and is part of the following WikiProjects: Ethiopia, Anthropology, Paleontology, and Archaeology.

Conclusion
This article could benefit from significant improvements. It is underdeveloped/poorly developed. The content of the page currently is lacking, and the information is not always synthesized appropriately. The article's strengths are having several good sources and all topics that should be included are represented even if the content within each topic area is lacking. This article could be improved by expanding the content thorough the inclusion of more sources both directly related to Gona and those that relate more generally to early Oldowan. It would also benefit from more synthesis of the source material already present and reconfiguring some of the sections to improve the organization and flow.