Talk:Hilly Flanks

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment.

Non-copyvio

I placed a db-copyvio on this page because I significantly misread something as a claim that the text was copied and pasted from a McGraw-Hill textbook. On further reflection, I realized that I was mistaken and removed the tag. My apologies for causing the confusion! - CHAIRBOY (☎) 01:33, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Facts/Citations

This article asserts many notions as verified fact when they are mere hypotheses and some are widely contested. Furthermore, more information can be included throughout this article. (I might get around to it, but I wanted to point the issues for the community anyway) 99.72.108.134 (talk) 04:15, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Hilly Flanks = Mesopotamia??

My understanding is that these are two separate places. One is hilly, hence the name, the other is between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Hilly Flanks are where agriculture began, Mesopotamia is where civilisation began millennia later. LastDodo (talk) 11:20, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Hilly Flanks = Stub edit

Hi fellow reader/editor. I've added a lot more research and information to this stub, with the hopes it'll move up in the Wikipedia article classifications. I would appreciate some guidance, insight, suggestions, feedback, or discussions about the content. I'm no expert, but I'm happy to bounce off ideas and hear opinions. Redherring22 (talk) 22:33, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Archaeology

Voice 154.231.103.39 (talk) 13:22, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Requested Review

Per the request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Archaeology/Assessment#Requestin an assessment, I've taken a look at the article. It's clear, reads well and is informative about the subject - about which I knew very little before starting, so I'll limit my comments to what I can say about the style, structure and expression.

It's clearly much better than Stub class - to my eyes, it's either at the very top of C or just creeping onto B. I've popped it straight into C, but my instinct is that a lot of the below can be quickly fixed and would make a move up to B (or indeed a GA nomination) straightforward.

A few things I noticed, looking through:

Lead

• It's not usual to cite sources in the lead - see MOS:CITELEAD - unless quoting someone directly or saying something really controversial. In theory, the lead should be a shortened version of the whole article, so any statements of fact should appear again in the main text and be cited there. The text of the lead itself is excellent for my needs as an interested non-specialist.
• "Hilly Flanks" seems to be generally used in speech marks - 'single quotes' would be more usual (see Use–mention distinction#Grammar).

Etymology

• The term 'hilly flanks' has been commonly associated [emphasis mine] - I'm a little uncomfortable with a whole (short) paragraph asserting that a phrase is in common use without citing at least an example of that use. Strictly speaking, it would be best to find a source asserting that the phrase is common.
• The phrasing of Braidwood's theory, particularly the middle part of that sections (This enabled societies to carry out agriculture without irrigation. Communities were able to raise livestock in this region.) - the 'voice' seems to be shifting here; I'm a little unclear about what's being presented as Braidwood's theory versus a fact asserted by the article itself. I notice that the citation here is to Braidwood's obit, and this seems to be pretty brief summary: could the original article or book (and perhaps some responses to it?) be tracked down to flesh out exactly what Braidwood argued, his evidence base, and how it was received?
• ...evidence that supported Braidwood's theory... - do we know what that evidence was?
• I wonder if the Ren et al article cited at the end of 'Etymology' explicitly based their use of the 'Hilly Flanks' term on its use in the Middle East?
• More generally, I'm not sure that 'Etymology' is the right section to discuss the putative origins of agriculture in the Hilly Flanks. It would be better, I think, to roll that material into the 'Archaeology' section, which would also fix the minor problem that the beginning of the Archaeology section repeats some of the earlier material but misses out a lot of it, making for a slightly too-clean picture.

Archaeology

• I've made some minor copyedits in the first paragraph here.
• A map would make the geography easier - I'm not totally clear on how the Shahrizor, Pishdar and Rania plains fit into/interact with the 'Hilly Flanks'.
• There's a bit of WP:FLUFF here - I've made some edits (e.g. that Ubaid pottery has a unique style - is there such thing as a named style that isn't unique?).
• which the culture viewed as a “sign of femininity.” - is this known-for-sure certain, or more of an 'it has been suggested that...'?
• I've popped in a couple of tags where the text seems to be implying or gesturing at something that isn't explicit. In particular, see implies a period of discovering their body and identity. - who are 'they', and what exactly does 'a period of discovering their body' entail?
• I've put a tag on the expedition - assume it's the one cited?

Agriculture

• The hilly flanks are largely believed to be the origins of agriculture - this definitely needs direct citation to academic literature on the subject: it's a big claim and I don't think Braidwood's obit or Britannica are quite enough for it, if indeed those citations are intended to back that statement up.
• ...there was an inconsistency in the pig management methods used throughout the region... - could this be expanded/explained? Is it just a matter of timing, as discussed in the following sentences?
• The early Holocene climate change - could briefly recap the characteristics of that change which are relevant here.
• A noteworthy finding from the Joint Istanbul University-Chicago Oriental Institute Prehistoric Project was the low presence of grains and grain legumes. The researchers believe the poor preservation of the food plants in the upper levels may account for this diminished amount. The decline in traces of food plants may indicate a difference in dependency of food sources, from plant to animal - these three sentences seem to be slightly contradictory - first, the finding is noteworthy, next, it's just an artefact of taphonomy. In the third sentence, it's no longer an artefact, but evidence for changing dietary practices. It sounds like there's more than one person's interpretation being discussed here, but only one source is cited.
• Shahrizor, a wide valley in the hilly flanks region bordered by the Zagros Mountains in the northeast and the mountainous Surdash region in the northwest, is known for its agricultural history. - this sounds like WP:PUFF to me, unless this place has been noted in the literature as famous for farming. If so, probably needs a rephrase.

References

• A very minor point - but the citation for Childe's Oasis Theory is a ThoughtCo. post. There's nothing wrong with that citation in itself, but it would probably be wise to go straight to the source (Childe) as well, if possible.
• With so many references, I think a separate bibliography section would be useful. Personally, I'm a fan of using the full citation in the bibliography and {{sfn}} templates to generate the footnotes rather than <ref> tags: it's a lot more human-legible and easier to keep track of multiple references to the same source, particularly when different pages are cited at different times.

UndercoverClassicist (talk) 11:41, 3 January 2023 (UTC)