User:Frphnflng/sandbox

Plagiarism
Longtime reader, first time commenter. Be gentle.

An academic linguist, I'm brushing up my non-specialist knowledge of the history of England, having tumbled on Francis Pryor's Britain AD, which argues strongly against the Anglo-Saxon invasion & displacement story canonical in history of English texts. I had already heard of Oppenheimer's stuff, so I knew there was a fight going on somewhere, but hadn't found reports of the action. This page is a wonderful touchstone for me to explore from, so thanks to its creators and shepherds. However ...

Doing exactly that exploration, I found that a significant part of the section titled "'Saxon' political ascendency in Britain" is plagiarized from Nick Higham's article in History Compass 2:1, DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2004.00085.x. For instance, the clause "Kenneth Dark, who has argued that Britain should not be divided..." appears verbatim in both. I haven't checked if any of the other sections on the page are plagiarized.

I actually like the text, in both places. It seems to present a balanced summary of two reasoned interpretations of the non-dispositive evidence. I doubt, though, that this is a WP-sanctioned method for achieving that end.

Now that plagiarism has put me over the tipping point into creating a user identity, I'll start trying to contribute where my specialty gives me standing. This, however, is not such an area. Can I leave it to those of you supervising?

Side issue: Francis Pryor reports (p 212-3) a tooth enamel study by Paul Budd & team that may be the one Urselius was thinking of: 10 of 24 dead in an E. Heslington Anglian cemetery came from west of the Pennines, but contra Urselius' memory 4 of the 24 were in fact from Old Anglia or Scandinavia. However, all 4 were female, and 1 was juvenile, a situation seemingly unaccounted for by the fostering/hostage hypothesis of language shift Urselius and J Beake were discussing. Still, addressing this conflict seems like original research rather than WP material. Frphnflng (talk) 21:31, 21 May 2014 (UTC)