User:Ksaldan3/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.) Archaeology of Rwanda

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 thought it sounded interesting, and after reviewing the article I could see that the information provided was thorough and touched on multiple subtopics surrounding African archaeology. This article matters to be able to make further conclusions about the evolution of burials and ceramics that appear in many Southeast Asian countries as well. This article also references the Iron Age which helps to place the material findings from this site chronologically along with findings in SEA. My preliminary impression of it was that it suggests various viewpoints, for example towards the bottom of this article it expands on the concerns about archaeology in Rwanda. I find this to be a good way for a reader to know that the article is not biased because it provides multiple view points to gather one's thoughts, and it further evaluates related articles on similar topics.

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.) As for the lead of the article, I don't think the introductory sentence truly reveals the entirety of the article to the fullest extent. The lead paragraph when read together, does include a description of the major sections of the article. The lead does not mention anything that is not mentioned later in the article, and it provides the basic idea of the article in a short and concise manner. I would say that everything in the article mostly relates to the topic of the article. If anything, I thought that introducing the Nyiginya Kingdom as the predecessor to Rwanda was slightly distracting because it made changed how I was interpreting the information of the article in order of time. I'm not sure that these references are out of date, but when clicking the highlighted link of reference one and three it brought me to a Wikipedia article page that alerted me that the article had multiple issues. I think something that is potentially missing are photos or examples of the classic Urewe ceramics and ceramic types. There is mentioning of pastoralism concerning these hunter-gatherers, but I think an explanation that goes into their methods of illness and sickness would be worth touching on the strategies or theories of these early civilizations. I think the article actually does a good job of representing the populations with the topic focused on the government of Rwanda, which further explored the many identities that established the Dynasty. I think more could be added to the article section about the concerns of Rwanda, I think that there could be more discussed here, given it's the shortest section of the article as well. I would gather that the article is neutral in stating facts and being informational rather than opinionated. With this type of article discussing archaeology of a specific site, it's hard to make any argument as the main point is to educate. I think the tone discussing the Iron Age farming techniques under-represents the effect that the cereal crops had on farmers. The citations that do have direct links work, and they further support the claims of the article. The facts scattered in the article are followed by footnotes that link them directly to the citations at the bottom of the page. Upon opening the links to these citations, it is clear that these sources are scholarly works or that they are journals that have been peer-reviewed by many. The sources are reasonably current all from the late 2000s up to 2015 as the most recent source. The sources are written by both men and women, and of varying scholarly focuses. However, the same author was featured in four of the five separate sources, so it is possible that the information could be biased since it comes from the work of one individual mixed with others disproportionately. Upon my own researching of this topic, I found one source on archaeology of Rwanda, Rwandan solutions to Rwandan problems: Heritage decolonization and community engagement in Nyanza District, Rwanda. This source does not include the author, John Giblin which is featured in many of the current sources. The information of two articles comes from SpringerLink, and the other comes from Taylor Francis Online. However, sources one and three have faulty links associated and are both from Left Coast Press. There is no mentioning of biased references in the article, or acknowledgment that the sources could be biased. However, upon reading the article the information presented does not come across as one sided or argumentative, and the sources of most of the information are from reliable journals and articles. The sources are not extremely diverse considering four of the five sources come from the same two publishers. There are no conversations under the Talk page. The article is rated as Start-Class and as Low-Importance. This article is a part of WikiProject Archaeology. I think Wikipedia discusses this article in a similar way to how we have discussed it in class in the way that it offers a chance to gain more coverage on archaeology in general, and to make more sites known to the public. I think the organization of the article is clear and I like that each section was bolded and was written in a way that is easy to understand. I did not catch any grammatical or spelling errors. I think the current images help enhance the readers perspective from a geographical standpoint, but not much else. The captions are short and concise, they are to the point. The captions basically associate names to places. Both images lead to external sources supported by Wikipedia. The images could be more visually appealing, and there could be more images in general. I think this article has a strong start, and I think it creates a better idea of what the work will look like in this class. The strengths of the article was the ability to show many aspects of the archaeology of Rwanda that focused on multiple things like burials, ceramics, history, dynasties, families, cultures, religions, etc. The article can be improved with the insertion of more images, along with further examination of the concerns about the site of Rwanda and how it is affecting the current area and communities surrounding it. I think this article is well-developed.