Talk:Marmes Rockshelter

Marmes Rockshelter has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 18, 2008	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 3, 2008.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that despite being a National Historic Landmark and the site of Washington's oldest known human remains, the Marmes Rockshelter was submerged after the Lower Monumental Dam construction?

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Good Article

Congratulations to Murderbike and the others who edited. This article is definitely well-written and well-referenced. I think you've also pretty well covered the site not only in its local, but also it national context. It's NPOV, stable, factual.

The only change I've made is a slight formatting/citation change to the NRHP Reference# to show I'm paying attention. Having the reference tag on a separate line first made me think it was saying NRHP 66000745, Reference#: [1]. I've also changes the citation to the actual database page about the site. I could have left that as a note for someone else to do, but I think that would be a needlessly pedantic way of maintaining neutrality.

It's the first GA review I've done, and I have to thank Murderbike for making this an easy one. Alunsalt (talk) 11:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it is a good article on an important site that Murderbike obviously spent considerable time on.

I have a few suggestions that the provided citations should cover. When you state the 11,230 date and years old after it, you should clarify that those are radiocarbon years and when calibrated will equal about that B.C. calendar years (add 2000 years for that time range). If you want an exact calibration there are several online calibration sites. Also, this date (on swan bone IIRC) may not be cultural, and it might be good to point that out.

In the findings at the site you describe a bunch of stone tools recovered there, and then in a following sentence you say "Stone tools were found as well." In light of the preceding description of stone tools this is a bit awkward. Also, agate/chalcedony does occur in that vicinity and largely throughout the Columbia Plateau in the form of agatized wood. But it might be worth mentioning the obsidian sourced to Oregon that was recovered.

Finally, in the implications of findings section you make the case that the recent Hicks report demonstrates that the human remains from Marmes Rockshelter are the oldest in the New World. This is not the case. The earliest dates are not connected with any of the human remains there, and earlier dates on the Marmes Horizon are consistent (9,900 BP IIRC). The Buhl skeleton and the Anzick remains are still older.--Windustsearch (talk) 22:33, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I am pretty sure I have a modern photo of the flooded rockshelter that I took from the levee. If you want to use it, you can have it.--Windustsearch (talk) 22:50, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, it's been quite awhile since I wrote this article, and it's something that I didn't already know about, but had to research, so it's not real fresh in my mind. If you want to make those additions/changes, feel free, just make sure to cite them. as for the photo, I would suggest uploading it to commons.wikimedia.org, and adding it to the article, it'll be much simpler than giving me permission to do it. cheers, Murderbike (talk) 18:47, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]