This review is transcluded from Talk:Erlitou/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Generalissima (talk · contribs) 08:21, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 16:55, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Will take this on. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:55, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Generalissima: I think it would be worth getting the content and images nailed down (inasfar as we can ever do that on here) before doing sources and spotchecks: do you have any thoughts on the below? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 20:22, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• • Apologes for the delay; I was waiting to see if a source review was immediately forthcoming and then forgot about it, as I am oft to do. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:24, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    No worries -- I generally find it more useful to do the source review and spotchecks after the content is more-or-less fixed, rather than doing the spotchecks and then having to re-do them because the text has changed, or else leave them vouching for a version of the article that no longer exists. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:23, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    (apology for the delay anew; the I key on my keyboard broke and I have to go buy an external one, lol) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:59, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @UndercoverClassicist: There we go! Apologies for the delay. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 00:51, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Generalissima: just checking that you've seen the source review below? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:41, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• although Chinese archaeologists now generally recognize it as the capital of the Xia dynasty—although the existence of the dynasty is still debated by scholars. : two things here. Firstly, can we avoid although ... although? Secondly, I think we need to answer a few of the questions raised: why Chinese archaeologists, and which scholars? We seem to be implying that non-Chinese archaeology has a very different idea here.
  • Added some context in the body and lede for this. -G
• There are no formal areas set aside for burials, and tomb sites were used for only short intervals.: this seems to be contradictory. "Tombs" rather than "tomb sites"? I assume we mean that there are no formal cemeteries (that tombs and other types of structure were freely mixed), but this isn't quite what we mean: a tomb is, by definition, an area (however small) set aside for burial.
  • rephrased. -G
• The Chinese government declared Erlitou a national priority protected site in 1988 and a National Archaeological Park in 2022: the capitalisation here seems inconsistent.
  • Fixed. -G
• Link type site in the lead as well as body?
  • Fixed. -G
• The Erlitou culture spans over five hundred sites: suggest more than to remove the ambiguity of spans over.
  • Fixed. -G
• I'm not sure many readers will be intimately familiar with the geography of Henan: can we default the map to the map of China?
  • I'm not actually sure how to set the default map scope while still making both the provincial and national view selected. - G
• Further east, sites such Dashigu [Wikidata] may have been associated with the Erlitou or served as the centers of other neighboring polities.: I understand the desire for brevity, but think we need Erlitou culture, to avoid the unfortunate implication that we're treating these pots as people.
  • Makes sense - corrected. - G
• measure at around 600,000 square metres: simply measure.
  • Fixed. -G
• Although slag from bronze casting was produced, knives are the only bronze objects found from this phase.: I don't understand the although here: surely the implication is that the slag came from making knives?
  • Reworded. -G
• Including northern portions destroyed by the movement of the Luo: suggest Luo River, as we've called it earlier.
  • Fixed. -G
• Zhengzhou's metallurgical technology shows similarities to Erlitou, suggesting that craftsmen from Erlitou may have migrated to the new city as Erlitou declined: the culture-historicalness of this explanation upsets me, but there's not a lot you can do if this is the best that the academy can do.
  • It definitely seems like the archaeology of China takes harder to culture-historical framings then most, even among scholars who are Xia-skeptical. Nationalistic framings die hard. -G
• Various radiocarbon dating measures taken during the 20th century attested a date range of 1900–1500 BC: I think we need a less confident word than attested here: radiocarbon dates, depending on where and when you are in the world, can be wildly imprecise. "Indicate" or similar.
  • Good idea, fixed. -G
• Its maximum population is not known: this is true for just about any ancient site (and indeed most modern cities!): unless it's particularly uncertain here, I would be tempted just to jump to "One study estimated..."
  • True; removed. -G
• measuring 73 m × 53 m (240 ft × 174 ft) and 3 m (9.8 ft) in depth.: I think we need in area in the middle.
  • Fixed. - G
• This isn't a dealbreaker at all for GA, but where you have e.g. "generally between 10–20 m" (that is, you want the reader to actively read the word "and" or "to" in the sentence), it's best to actually write "between 10 and 20 metres" rather than using a dash.
  • Okay, done. -G
• We talk briefly about tombs in the "smaller buildings" section, then have a section on tombs immediately afterwards. This seems strange.
  • Moved a sentence. -G
• in the tombs of elites, bronze ritual vessels, turquoise, and jade have also been found. : again, this upsets me as a rather-too-simple bit of archaeological explanation (we've known since the 1980s that a fancy tomb does not always equal high social status -- Mike Parker Pearson pointed out that the grandest tombs in Cambridge cemetery belonged to itinerant circus-folk), but there may be little that you can do if the academics insist on it.
  • Very true - I wish you went into East Asian archaeology! -G
• Although it may not have been the earliest culture in China to cast bronze and copper—the Qijia and Huoshaogou cultures did so roughly contemporaneously—Erlitou was the first site confirmed to produce bronze ritual vessels: not quite grammatical: as we're using it here, Erlitou is a site, not a culture.
  • Rephrased. -G
• The most common of these are small drinking cups, jia and jue, although a he [zh] and a ding have also been recovered from the site: a what and a what?
  • Added context. -G
• tin-copper, lead-copper, tin-lead-copper, and arsenic-copper alloys; tin-lead-copper is the most frequently attested of these alloys: these hyphens should be endashes ("lead and copper").
• the first Shang king Tang of Shang: can he just be Tang to avoid repetition?
  • Done. -G
• According to historian Sima Qian's (c. 145–85 BCE) Shiji,: the MoS doesn't like dates of life in brackets like this: can we say something like "The Shiji, written by the historian Sima Qian between..."?
  • Rephrased. -G
• Founded by Yu the Great, thirty kings of the dynasty ruled over a period of 400 years, before it was superseded by the Shang: I think this needs to be phrased as a matter of "according to..." as well, given that these people may not have existed.
  • Done. -G
• Chinese historians and archaeologists generally interpret later historical materials such as the Bamboo Annals and Shiji as sufficient evidence for the dynasty's existence: what about non-Chinese historians?
  • Added context. -G
• It exhibits over 2,000 artifacts, including 112 first-class national cultural relics [zh]: I think it would help to explain what that designation means.
  • Fixed. -G
• All footnotes should end in a full stop/period.
  • Fixed. -G

To follow.

• Would be nice to have an image or two in the "History" and "Layout" sections -- we go quite a long time with text only.
• Alt texts and captions look good.
• File:20240815 Erlitou Site 05.jpg: China has freedom of panorama, so all good here.
• File:China Henan location map.svg: checks out.
• File:Erlitou map.svg: checks out (I'll check the source as part of the spot check).
• File:嵌绿松石铜牌饰（81YLVM4）, 2024-06-22.jpg: PD tag for the image checks out. Strictly, I'd include a PD tag for the artwork itself, as it's clearly taken inside a museum, so FoP may be less clear-cut than an outdoor site. There's a useful tag {{PD-art-70-3d}} for this.
• File:青铜爵08792.jpg: as above.
• File:绿松石龙形器8.jpg: checks out under FoP.
• File:20240815 Erlitou Site 02.jpg: as above.
• File:20240815 Erlitou Xia Capital Site Museum 01.jpg: as above.
  • Added PD-art-70-ed tags. - G

Sources appear to be consistently cited: SFNs are used for books and journal titles, with full references for web pages with no clear authorship. This is a consistent system that meets the requirements for GA. There is some inconsistency as to what metadata is provided (in particular, whether ISSNs are given for journals) -- I am personally a strong advocate of giving ISSNs where possible, as they allow instant verification that the journal indeed exists and disambiguate between similar journal titles, but this is not a major issue at this point. I am not an expert in the subject area and so unable to vouch for any of the sources or authors directly, but we have a strong preponderance of academic journals and publishers which means that the sourcing clearly passes an initial screen for reliability.

• The first and third chapters in the bibliography from the Oxford Handbook of Early China appear to be uncited.
  • Removed. -G

• Note 55: checks out from the 1988 source, but I'm not sure that's an ideal source for "has been generally identified with", given its age.
  • Added a more recent cite to support this. -G
• Note 56: a long one, which checks, but NB MOS:DASH -- endashes for e.g. Xia–Shang transition.
  • Fixed. -G
• Notes 59 and 60: support Many sinologists outside of China—and a minority of historians and archaeologists within China—are critical of the historicity of the Xia, and doubt that the Erlitou culture can be unambiguously equated to a "Xia culture".. From the source cited as note 60 (Chen 2019), we have Although it is often said that scholars outside China deny the existence of the Xia dynasty, sinologists cannot entirely represent the views of Western academics. What we call the field of sinology is not exactly a monolith either. For instance, a large number of Japanese scholars recognize the existence of the Xia dynasty and its relationship with Erlitou culture, and considerable divergence is seen in the views of Western sinologists.. This may technically support what we say, but there is a WP:TSI problem, because Chen is using that fact to point towards precisely the opposite conclusion -- we are saying that non-Chinese scholars generally deny the existence of the Xia, while Chen is saying that it's a mistake to say that. Perhaps a footnote would allow you to add the nuance without getting distracted by minutiae? Likewise, Chen and Gong seem to be pointing in the opposite direction: Due to the persistence of leading archaeologists, the controversy caused by some objections to these findings faded away. For instance, archaeologist Zou Heng prevailed over all dissenting views and agreed that the Erlitou Culture was the Xia Culture ... Some scholars optimistically claimed that the negation of the existence of the Xia Dynasty had already been exhausted through several decades of painstaking scholarship, and as a result, nowadays those scholars who negated the Xia were indeed few in number ... ‘The Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties Chronology Project’ not only establishes a factual existence of the Xia ....

• @UndercoverClassicist: I had a hard time figuring out how to get this to work right. I weakened it to some western Sinologists a little, does that end up summarizing it well enough? Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 07:14, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's fine, but doesn't really get across the quite clear fault-line between Chinese and (mostly) non-Chinese academia here. It might be that we can't really source that, in which case, no harm no foul -- we could go for something like The Chinese scholars XYZ wrote in 2024 that anyone doubting the existence of the Xia was an "idiot", while the American Sinologist ABC said that the idea that the Xia were real was "completely bananas" -- but even that runs SYNTH risks. At any rate, I think we're fine here for GA: remind me of this if it ever comes up to FAC, and I'll have a harder think about it. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 09:45, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]