User:CKC29/Choose an Article

Evaluation 1: Border Cave
Article Evaluation

Although this article has some good information and a basic outline, the introduction is too detailed and contains too much information about the site's excavation history. The article mostly presents factual information, but occasionally asserts biased claims (i.e. with phrases such as “These [tools] represent some of the earliest unambiguous evidence for modern human behavior”). The article's sources are also not up to date, and a few are not scholarly publications. There are also very few images, which makes it difficult to visualize the site's findings and their importance.

PROPOSED CHANGES

I will restructure the article's sections and will incorporate more viewpoints from recent research to minimize the biased tone that this article occasionally has. I will also try to make the article's writing more simple and concise to improve readability. The article already has some useful information on the site’s environmental setting and archaeological finds, which simply need to be consolidated into more refined sections and updated with the most recent research. I also plan to update the page's citations with more current literature (listed below). This literature will cover the most recent analyses of Border Cave's site dating, findings, and interpretations of material culture and human remains. I plan to add more images of the site overview, excavation maps, material culture, flora and fauna present pending on the images' availability and use permissions. Doing so will help readers visualize the site's findings and contextualize them with human evolutionary studies.

I propose to format the article as follows (with indentations representing sub-headings):


 * 1) Lead Section
 * 2) Site Overview (geography, importance in debates of human evolution and hunter-gatherer behavior)
 * 3) Environment (add images of Border Cave current ecology)
 * 4) Present Day Regional Flora and Fauna
 * 5) Paleoenvironment and Flora and Fauna
 * 6) Excavation History (add images of site excavations available on wikimedia commons)
 * 7) Move most of the Article's current Lead Section information on dates of excavation to this paragraph
 * 8) Site Dating
 * 9) Luminescence, ESR
 * 10) Paleoanthropological Findings (use current image of human remains on the Border Cave Page)
 * 11) Lebombo Mountains Human Remains
 * 12) Archaeological Findings
 * 13) Middle Stone Age
 * 14) (paragraphs on grass bedding, lithics, fauna)
 * 15) Later Stone Age
 * 16) (paragraphs on bone tools, lithics, fauna)
 * 17) "San" Material Culture Debate
 * 18) Add perspectives of Pargeter and colleagues (2016a; 2016b) and eliminate the article's biased tone.
 * 19) Site Significance
 * 20) Human Evolutionary Processes
 * 21) Interpretations of Hunter-Gatherer Behavior

Proposed Updated References:

Backwell, L. R., d'Errico, F., Banks, W. E., de La Peña, P., Sievers, C., Stratford, D., ... & Wadley, L. (2018). New excavations at border cave, KwaZulu-natal, South Africa. Journal of Field Archaeology, 43(6), 417-436.

Backwell, L., Wadley, L., D’errico, F., Banks, W. E., de La Peña, P., Stratford, D., ... & Mauran, G. (2022). Border Cave: A 227,000-year-old archive from the southern African interior. Quaternary Science Reviews, 107597.

Beaudet, A., d’Errico, F., Backwell, L., Wadley, L., Zipfel, B., de la Peña, P., & Reyes-Centeno, H. (2022). A reappraisal of the border cave 1 cranium (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). Quaternary Science Reviews, 282, 107452.

de la Peña, P., Colino, F., d’Errico, F., Wadley, L., Banks, W. E., Stratford, D., & Backwell, L. (2022). Lithic technological and spatial analysis of the final Pleistocene at Border Cave, South Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews, 296, 107802.

d'Errico, F., & Backwell, L. (2016). Earliest evidence of personal ornaments associated with burial: the Conus shells from Border Cave. Journal of Human Evolution, 93, 91-108.

d’Errico, Francesco, Paola Villa, Ilaria Degano, Jeanette Lucejko, Maria Perla Colombini, and Peter Beaumont. (2016).The ‘to be or not to be’ of archaeological enquiry. Antiquity 90(352):1079–1082. DOI:10.15184/aqy.2016.101.

Pargeter, Justin, Alex MacKay, Peter Mitchell, John Shea, and Brian A. Stewart (2016a). Primordialism and the ‘Pleistocene San’ of southern Africa. Antiquity 90(352):1072–1079. DOI:10.15184/aqy.2016.100.

Pargeter, Justin, Alex MacKay, Peter Mitchell, John Shea, and Brian A. Stewart. (2016b). ‘Primordialism and the “Pleistocene San” of southern Africa’: final reply. Antiquity 90(352):1087–1089. DOI:10.15184/aqy.2016.131.

Tribolo, C., Mercier, N., Dumottay, C., Cantin, N., Banks, W. E., Stratford, D., ... & d’Errico, F. (2022). Luminescence dating at Border Cave: attempts, questions, and new results. Quaternary Science Reviews, 296, 107787.

Wadley, L., Esteban, I., De La Peña, P., Wojcieszak, M., Stratford, D., Lennox, S., ... & Sievers, C. (2020). Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa. Science, 369(6505), 863-866.

Evaluation 2: Olorgesailie

This article has good information on the Olorgesailie basin’s geography, findings, and geology, though the quantity of information is lacking. The article does a good job of maintaining  objectivity and a neutral tone. The article’s claims have citations, most of which are fairly recent. Although most of the sources are academic publications, there are a few that are from websites. The article does not address any of Wikipedia’s equity gaps. The talk page has general discussion on adding external links, and minor phrasing changes of certain sentences.

I propose to add an additional section to the article discussing Olorgesailie Basin’s significance in human evolutionary studies. Currently, most of the information summarizes the findings within the Basin. There is a brief section within the “Findings” section that discusses the implications of handaxe and obsidian findings (i.e. butchery, exchange networks, artifact transport), but there should be more up to date information on the analyses of materials from the basin (i.e. hominin remains sensu Mori et al. (2020)). The geology section also only contains information on volcanoes and a few minerals from the basin, and I propose to add more information on the stratigraphy of various parts of the basin.

Sources

Deino, A. L., Dommain, R., Keller, C. B., Potts, R., Behrensmeyer, A. K., Beverly, E. J., ... & Olorgesailie Drilling Project Scientific Team. (2019). Chronostratigraphic model of a high-resolution drill core record of the past million years from the Koora Basin, south Kenya Rift: Overcoming the difficulties of variable sedimentation rate and hiatuses. Quaternary Science Reviews, 215, 213-231.

Kinyanjui, R. N., Meadows, M., Gillson, L., Bamford, M. K., Behrensmeyer, A. K., & Potts, R. (2021). Reconstructing vegetation history of the Olorgesailie Basin during the Middle to Late Pleistocene using phytolith data. In Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics–The African Pollen Database (pp. 85-106). CRC Press.

Mori, T., Profico, A., Reyes-Centeno, H., & Harvati, K. (2020). Frontal bone virtual reconstruction and geometric morphometric analysis of the mid-Pleistocene hominin KNM-OG 45500 (Olorgesailie, Kenya). ''J. Anthropol. Sci, 98'', 49-72.

Option 3: Kathu Archaeological Complex
Article Evaluation

This article is severely lacking in information. It opens up with a brief introduction to the Kathu Pan archaeological sites. The article uses objective language and presents conclusions about some sites’ findings (i.e. Kathu-Pan 1 points) as the researchers state. In doing so, the article editors remove their own subjectivity from the article. However, the article is missing information on how some of the conclusions about these findings is disputed (i.e. Rots and Plisson (2014)), which may unintentionally lead to a reader only being aware of one interpretation of Kathu Pan-1’s artifacts. Most of the article’s citations are from scholarly sources, with only one being a website. However, there are very few sources for the entire article. The article also does not address one of Wikipedia’s equity gaps. The article’s talk page is also inactive.

I propose to add a section on the Kathu-Pan Complex’s paleoenvironmental history, since there are many recent articles published on the subject. I will also add sections on Kathu Pan site stratigraphies and artifact findings per locality. I also plan to add more information on the debate between Rots and Plisson (2014) and Wilkins and colleagues (2015) regarding whether Kathu Pan-1’s points are “spear” points to balance out the current information available in the article. More recent information on the Complex’s stratigraphy and dating is also present to be discussed within the Wikipedia article. To orient the reader to the geography of the Kathu Pan Complex, I will also add an image of a map showing the site locations and images of the sites and their excavations.

Sources

Lukich, V., Cowling, S., & Chazan, M. (2020). Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of Kathu Pan, South Africa, based on sedimentological data. Quaternary Science Reviews, 230, 106153.

Lukich, V., Porat, N., Faershtein, G., Cowling, S., & Chazan, M. (2019). New chronology and stratigraphy for Kathu Pan 6, South Africa. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, 2, 235-257.

Mohale, N. E., Codron, D., & Horwitz, L. K. (2022). Stable isotope evidence for mid-Pleistocene paleoenvironmental conditions at the site of Kathu Pan 1 (central interior, South Africa). Quaternary International, 614, 37-49.

Rots, V., & Plisson, H. (2014). Projectiles and the abuse of the use-wear method in a search for impact. Journal of Archaeological Science, 48, 154-165.

Wilkins, J., Schoville, B. J., Brown, K. S., & Chazan, M. (2015). Kathu Pan 1 points and the assemblage-scale, probabilistic approach: A response to Rots and Plisson,“Projectiles and the abuse of the use-wear method in a search for impact”. Journal of Archaeological Science, 54, 294-299.

Option 4: Amanzi Springs Archaeological Site
Article Evaluation

This article is a stub and only has a very brief overview of Amanzi Springs’ excavation history and mention of Acheulean artifacts. The article maintains a neutral view throughout, and only presents objective information.There are only two citations for the entire article, and most of the article’s sentences do not have sources. Both citations are reputable, but there are not enough of them. The article does not address any of Wikipedia’s equity gaps, and the talk page is inactive.

I propose to make the excavation history a separate section from the introduction and add another section about findings from the site (i.e. handaxes) and their respective analyses. There is also a dearth of information on site stratigraphy in the Wikipedia article, and I plan to add that in another section. I also plan to add another section on the significance of the Amanzi Springs site. My proposed additional sources are below.

Sources

Caruana, M. V., & Herries, A. I. (2021). Modelling production mishaps in later Acheulian handaxes from the Area 1 excavation at Amanzi Springs (Eastern Cape, South Africa) and their effects on reduction and morphology. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 39, 103121.

Caruana, M. V., & Herries, A. I. (2020). An Acheulian balancing act: A multivariate examination of size and shape in Handaxes from Amanzi Springs, eastern cape, South Africa. Landscapes of human evolution, 91-115.

Caruana, M. V., Wilson, C. G., Arnold, L. J., Blackwood, A. F., Demuro, M., & Herries, A. I. (2023). A marine isotope stage 13 Acheulian sequence from the Amanzi Springs Area 2 Deep Sounding excavation, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution, 176, 103324.

Herries, A. I., Arnold, L. J., Boschian, G., Blackwood, A. F., Wilson, C., Mallett, T., ... & Caruana, M. V. (2022). A marine isotope stage 11 coastal Acheulian workshop with associated wood at Amanzi Springs Area 1, South Africa. Plos one, 17(10), e0273714.

Option 5: Pinnacle Point
Article Evaluation

This article has some basic information on the excavation history of Pinnacle Point Caves, though mainly focuses on Pinnacle Point 13B. Not all of the article’s content is about Pinnacle Point, but all of the information links back to the broader implications of the findings at Pinnacle Point. Not all of the claims in the article are cited (i.e. “After debating for decades, paleoanthropologists now agree there is enough genetic and fossil evidence to suggest that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa c. 200,000 – c. 160,000 years ago”). The article has mostly reliable citations, but a few are unreliable (web pages). The article discusses how Pinnacle Point findings have implications for “modern human behavior,” though it does not discuss how many tend to disfavor the modernity concept (i.e. Shea 2011). The article does not address equity gaps. The article’s talk page contains corrections related to findings at the Pinnacle Point sites (i.e. no human remains found) and suggested adding more references for “modern human behavior.”

I plan to add more sections to this article about PP5-6 and PP30. I also plan to describe each site’s material culture and stratigraphy in a more systematic manner than the article currently does. Instead of having a “modern human behavior” section, I will instead have a section at the end of the article titled “significance in human evolution,” where I plan to discuss researchers’ views of how Pinnacle Point has influenced interpretations of human origins and adaptations.

Sources

Esteban, Irene, Curtis W. Marean, Erich C. Fisher, Panagiotis Karkanas, Dan Cabanes, and Rosa M. Albert. (2018). Phytoliths as an indicator of early modern humans plant gathering strategies, fire fuel and site occupation intensity during the Middle Stone Age at Pinnacle Point 5-6 (south coast, South Africa). Edited by Michael D. Petraglia. PLOS ONE 13(6):e0198558. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0198558.

Jerardino, Antonieta, and Curtis W. Marean. (2010). Shellfish gathering, marine paleoecology and modern human behavior: perspectives from cave PP13B, Pinnacle Point, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 59(3–4):412–424. DOI:10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.07.003.

Karkanas, Panagiotis, Kyle S. Brown, Erich C. Fisher, Zenobia Jacobs, and Curtis W. Marean

(2015). Interpreting human behavior from depositional rates and combustion features through the study of sedimentary microfacies at site Pinnacle Point 5-6, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 85:1–21. DOI:10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.04.006.

Rector, Amy L., and Kaye E. Reed. (2010). Middle and late Pleistocene faunas of Pinnacle Point and their paleoecological implications. Journal of Human Evolution 59(3–4):340–357. DOI:10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.07.002.

Shea, John J. (2011). Homo sapiens Is as Homo sapiens Was: Behavioral Variability versus “Behavioral Modernity” in Paleolithic Archaeology. Current Anthropology 52(1):1–35. DOI:10.1086/658067.

Wilkins, Jayne, Kyle S. Brown, Simen Oestmo, Telmo Pereira, Kathryn L. Ranhorn, Benjamin J. Schoville, and Curtis W. Marean. (2017). Lithic technological responses to Late Pleistocene glacial cycling at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6, South Africa. Edited by Michael D. Petraglia. PLOS ONE 12(3):e0174051. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0174051.