Talk:Anglo-Saxon dress

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): DMcCune80.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:17, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Review

DMcCune80, the article so far sounds good! I think the changes you have made and information you have added has improved the article a great amount. I noticed that a lot of your edits were basic/background information, which is important to include for a better understanding on the topic. Your edits are also unbiased and formal. The only thing I noticed that could be improved is the sentence length. Some of the sentences are a little choppy. Maybe try tying a few together so it flows nicer. Good work!

Who is "Planché"?

Johnbod (talk) 15:41, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, James Planché - died 1880. I don't think he is an RS these days - nothing else from the 19th century on any aspect of Anglo-Saxon history would be. Please reference the work being cited. Johnbod (talk) 15:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I believe I tracked it down to OCLC 760370, but the page numbers are still one off, so the person who added these refs may have been using a modern reprint with slightly different pagination. The blogspot source and the Regia Anglorum handbook are also a bit dubius, and likely themselves go back to Gale Crocker. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:26, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Standardized spelling

I often standardize spelling in articles, removing occasional anomalies.
I don't believe I have ever seen an article as evenly split as this one is.
It has "woollen" (UK) and "woolen" (US) in roughly equal numbers. It has "jewellery" (UK) and "jeweled" (US).
It does not have a lot of recognise/recognize class words.
To me personally, UK seems logical and natural, but then I'm Canadian, so ...

For consistency, the contributors should probably settle on something.
Bear in mind that English is the default language of Wikipedia, and so people internationally, from Lithuania or Mongolia let's say, have only a modest amount available in their own languages.
So where are they likely to go? Here. This article exists in no other language. And here we have inconsistency.
Varlaam (talk) 19:38, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Sources

@Yngvadottir:, could you please undo your edits to the sources? Yes, they weren't the same as what was previously here, but what was previously here is awful. Just the name of the author and a random number, which only a connaisseur would know is the page. Hell, in one of the references, it's the chapter and not page number. All those sources should be made more like mine, not more like what was there before. The *book* isn't even listed, only the author, which is ridiculous. UtherPendrogn (talk) 12:31, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Why? I've improved it, including with my last edit identifying Owen-Crocker on the first occurrence. I suspect someone may have intended a notes and bibliography pattern, where repeated sources were fully identified in the bibliography and only page numbers given in the notes; I considered making that change but decided to leave it to others. I can't see any rationale for taking it back to varying usage, including removing the identification on the first use. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:06, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

You've not improved it. You've removed his name and only put "Owen-Crocker", not Gale R. Owen-Crocker, the name he is published under, also removed the name of the book, the publishers, the date, the chapters. You also broke several sources which are no longer invoked. I'm going to try and clean it up.

EDIT (29/11/2016 19:12): I could definitely be missing something, though. Could you point me to the policy you used when making your edits? If I'm wrong, I will revert immediately. Looking at it, it does seem very pedantic to note the details in full each time. UtherPendrogn (talk) 17:33, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I think you may have missed this edit, where I put the full publication info on the first occurrence of the Owen-Crocker source. This was the state of the article as I found it, after you inexplicably reverted Yobot creating named refs for repeated references and placing the punctuation correctly before the reference. Note that in addition to never identifying Planché, the article identifies Brooke twice and uses Owen Crocker many times before starting to identify that source every single time. That was the situation I tried to fix, in addition to the bare links, inadequate identifications, and I found the Regia Anglorum handbook source was now a broken link, and so supplied an archive link. I fail to see where I broke sources?? The policy is, not to change reference formatting without good reason. This article had a mix of formats—as I say, I think at one point someone was aiming for Notes and Bibliography, and that might well be best, since a limited number of books are used repeatedly—so I made it consistent, including last name and page only when referring the second and following times to the same book (which is quite acceptable). If you insist on full identification every time, which it seems you do, I won't stand in your way—I was only gnoming—I suggest you also reduce the number of columns from four to two, since such narrow columns are unsuitable when the references are all long. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:59, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I see the benefits of shortening it after the first entry but also find "Owen-Crocker 41" to be too crude. Something like "Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 41" might be better, with full credentials on the first page. You were right to modify it in the first place, but could have benefited from discussing here, as some users above discussed issues (which are still not resolved). UtherPendrogn (talk) 20:10, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Henry VIII has the format I'd like to see, where it would be "Owen-Crocker p.41" with "Owen-Crocker" being a link to the full source. What do you think?UtherPendrogn (talk) 20:12, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I would highly recommend adding the full citation to a "Works Cited" section within the Bibliography section, that then can be linked to, especially if you are using different parts of the book (I always default to a Works Cited when I am bein very precise about book citations), Sadads (talk) 21:41, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I'll let Yngvadottir handle it, he/she's clearly more knowledgeable on Wikipedia syntax than I am, I've basically fucked the page up now. Sorry. UtherPendrogn (talk) 22:19, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I've met Gale Owen-Crocker at Kalamazoo, I'm sure--it's been a while. At any rate, she is a she. I'll look into that book you asked about, Yngvadotyir; I'm on campus tomorrow. Drmies (talk) 01:26, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

You can start unfucking it by undoing this and the subsequent edit, which bizarrely insert full citations a dozen times or more. Drmies (talk) 01:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

You've not read any of the above, have you? Also, this is hounding. UtherPendrogn (talk) 06:25, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes I have--I saw you said you fucked it up, which is a correct statement; you have 31 (thirty-one) full citations of Owen-Crocker's book in the notes, which is ridiculous. No, this is not hounding: I'm following Yngvadottir's lead; she asked me for something on my talk page. We've been working together for many years. Also, this is my field so I take an interest in it. Please stop edit-warring about the "they", by the way; it is not redundant. PS: I see now you got blocked; that's too bad, but not surprising. Drmies (talk) 16:07, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

• (What a section heading. Oh well.) Those "harv" and "sfn" footnoting styles make my blood run cold. But UtherPendrogn did the spadework and gave me an example of how to convert a ref to the "harv" format. So providing that format permits named refs, I should be able to copy his example and convert all the book references to that format. Sadads, I believe you would prefer that format over unlinked notes + bibliography? Or is Drmies' reversion to my version of the footnotes, plus additional editing, acceptable? If either of you feels like doing the additional fiddling about to make the conversion to "harv", go ahead; I am shortly for bed. But otherwise I'll circle back to the task within the week. Then we get to think about the duplication and balance issues within the article. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:54, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Ah yes. Eric Corbett used to do that when we worked together. I still don't know what it means. I haven't looked at the article--in a case like this, with many citations from a few sources, I want separate notes and bibliography, but besides that I'm good with everything. Also, I want the citation to end with a period: I've always thought that the "but it's an incomplete sentence so it doesn't get a period" is complete BS. Drmies (talk) 00:31, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

• • • An IP editor has implemented sfns. It looks to me as if that's sorted it nicely. Now what else can we do to make this a better article? Yngvadottir (talk) 17:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

"They"

I am embarrassed for the project that we even have to discuss this. "They were fastened by brooches at the shoulders, though have sometimes been found as low as the breasts." doesn't make any sense, especially the bolded part. UtherPendrogn, please stop turning perfectly good sentences into garbage.--Adam in MO Talk 17:25, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

• I disagree--it makes sense, but it's very British English in an almost archaic way. I have restored your edit for reasons of elegance and legibility. Drmies (talk) 17:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

• Thank you for the edification. I had no idea. --Adam in MO Talk 21:00, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

"Wakerley Grave"

Associated with the reference to Owen-Crocker concerning Migration Age dress, was this: "Wakerley grave 74". It's now been removed because the editor who converted the reference style mistook it for an undefined book reference. It's the cemetery and grave number of the burial that supports the point. I wasn't sure which cemetery so left the format alone when I went through the Owen-Crocker references, but if possible the point of precision should be incorporated. (Maybe this means we need articles on a whole bunch of excavated cemeteries. I wouldn't be surprised; that's the kind of article we tend to lack). Yngvadottir (talk) 22:42, 7 December 2016 (UTC) ... With a bit of help, I tracked it down in Owen-Crocker and it's back in the article with some explanation. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:40, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Article Evaluation

I am taking a class where we are learning about Wikipedia and how to find and edit articles. I think this article could use more information on who the Saxons were in the lead. it would be nice to see more information on the dress of Women and Children. I also noticed that the picture examples of men's clothes were mostly kings. It talks briefly about embroidery but doesn't say if it is used on their clothes or just on tapestries. DMcCune80 (talk) 17:46, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I've added info to the lead paragraph. Added some cited info to the types of material used for clothing. Expanded on the sections of Women and Children clothing.

DMcCune80 (talk) 21:56, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Major update

Hi all,

I have been reading more recent academic publications on Anglo-Saxon life and I can see that this article needs a major update. There is a lot information cited from very old sources (Quennell, 1927), (Planche, 1879), and on the plus side, newer sources from an Anglo-Saxon textile scholar (Owen-Crocker, 2004). What I have learned from a recent review of the subject (Own-Crocker, 2011, various archaeological reports from 2000 onward ), is that information from older books and other publications on Anglo-Saxon clothing previously held as fact, is currently being re-evaluated by scholars. Below is a relevant quote from The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology (2011)

Since 1976, the progress made by science-based archaeology has been little short of revolutionarly, notably in biological and botanical reserach.... Dating of the Anglo-Saxon period has been traditionally dependent on documentary sources of variable reliability, in part because other methods, such as radiocarbon dating, have been notoriously difficult to apply to the Anglo-Saxon period with close precision. Recent developments in radiocarbon dating, Optically Stimulated Luminescence, dendrochronology and other science-based dating methods, are allowing us to date new kinds of materials, and to date with greater precision, thereby providing new and more nuanced readings to the Anglo-Saxon past.

— Sally Crawford, Helena Hamerow, David Hinton

I recommend an update to this article to reflect newer studies, reports and books. I would like to research this more and re-write the article. Because it would be a major re-write, I will wait to see if anyone has any comments or advice before I get started.

Below is an example of incorrect information in the article.

Lede: "The new Norman rulers had brought fashions from the continent that had a major effect in England. Anglo-Saxon dress had several different periods of transformation and the study of these periods includes examination of individual pieces of clothing, the textiles, and how the clothing was made." "By the time the Normans arrived in the 11th century, the Anglo-Saxon period was closing, so it is impossible for the Normans to have had a major effect on Anglo-Saxon dress, although they did have a major impact on dress after the 11th century. The first sentence is not relevant to Anglo-Saxon clothing."

A lot of the information in the different sections about what men and women wore is stated as fact, but newer studies show that scholars are really not certain what Anglo-Saxon men and women wore on a daily basis. I would like the re-written article to be more reflective of what Anglo-Saxon scholars do know now about Anglo-Saxon dress and I plan to do more reading on the subject in the next month or two, before I consider re-writing the article. MauraWen (talk) 15:08, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Ever since this article (which is indeed not very good) was translated (very badly) into French, more than two years ago, I have been hoping that someone would improve the original, so that I could in turn improve the French equivalent (since I am no specialist in that specific domain and have little inclination or opportunity to get the relevant bibliography). I am very glad to see the day has finally come! It will be very nice to see this article reach a better state. – Swa cwæð Ælfgar (talk) 23:06, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Update complete. I re-wrote the article to provide more detailed information on Anglo-Saxon dress, and to provide information that reflects the most current research on the subject. I removed content from outdated books or popular books without bibliographies (Brooke, Quenell). Some of Planche's information, although scholarly for its time (1879), is no longer considered factual given the current archaeological findings. Anglo-Saxon clothing historians, Owen-Crocker and Walton-Rogers are the best sources on the subject and have both written the most thorough studies of Anglo-Saxon textiles and clothing.

Citations for the article were mixed in style, which happens when multiple editors work on an article. I have chosen one style for the re-written article. I believe this simpler style will make it easier for future editors, especially less experienced ones, to add new content with citations. I organized the material chronologically, also to make it easier for editors to add new information. MauraWen (talk) 21:53, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

This looks great, I am a bit short on time these days but I am looking forward to actually reading it! The only thing that bugs me are the citations. It is usual on Wikipedia to give the exact page where the information can be found, whereas you have just provided the book. – Swa cwæð Ælfgar (talk) 18:53, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Agree entirely - text looks great but for books you really have to give page numbers. The style I use - book details once at the bottom, then "ref>Qwen-Crocker, 67</ref " is much simpler for newbies to adopt as well. Johnbod (talk) 20:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

@Johnbod and Ælfgar: I agree with what you both are saying about the citations. I thought this citation format would be easier for newbie editors to add new content, and I thought it would save time for me re-writing the article. That said, I agree with you that it would have been better if I had provided all the page numbers per citation. I have sent all but one of the books I used as sources back thru Interlibrary loan, so I cannot correct this immediately. I can put in another request for the books and if they allow a second checkout of what I have just returned, I will provide the page numbers per citation. MauraWen (talk) 16:41, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

That would be great, thanks. Johnbod (talk) 16:44, 7 March 2019 (UTC)