User:Corduroycopepods/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Zooarchaeology

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 it is my discipline. Zooarchaeology is important because it can tell us so much about past cultures and lead us to understand ourselves better. It gives a good overview of the topic and contextualizes it within the broader disciplines within which it operates.

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.)

Uses - I think these can be condensed into broad topics (with those that have the most research at the top and those with the least at the bottom) with narrower subtopics underneath. I think these topics should be linked to other Wiki articles (such as animal domestication). Additionally, the short paragraph at the end seems out of place.

Taphonomy - Needs a clear, basic definition, not just straight into examples. I'm also not sure if behavioral archaeology is appropriate to reference here. This section needs to be organized and cleaned up for redundancy.

Identification and taxonomy - This section should be broken up into at least two paragraphs and be cleaned up to be more concise and less redundant. Examples should follow basic explanations. Bone modification should be mentioned as another level of nuance. All of the explanations and examples should relate back to archaeology (not only just knowing what it is but why that helps us understand humans). There should also be more references to books that help with identification or to online references. The section "Quantification" could be included under "identification and taxonomy."

Examples from prehistory - Also feels redundant and could be combined with other sections as examples of the methods explained. Also want to make sure that we are not romanticizing the past and the people of the time. We also should connect zooarchaeology to theories like cultural continuity vs replacement theory.

I would add sections about geography and topics of interest based on geography. Maybe also a section or examples of interactions with extinct animals.

Overall, this article has a lot of information and references, but I would reorganize, tighten it up, and add a couple sections. There should also be many more photos about methods and examples.