Talk:History of pottery in Palestine

Untitled

02-09-05 I am copy and style editing this article, which has not had much attention since its creation. Some areas of the original article seem to lack complete sentences or don't quite make sense. I'm presently unfamiliar with the all research details cited, so will try to leave the "factual" material unaffected. In particular, I am trying to move from the plural 1st person "we" to the more academic 2nd or 3rd person and improving the sentence structure. Comments welcome -- please correct any historical errors.

Does anyone else think this article would be better as simply "Pottery in Palestine?"

- W (currently an anon) --as of 02-17-05 WBardwin.

I agree that the title is clumsy. Perhaps a better title would be "southern Levantine pottery"? Bporter615 23:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits

Your recent material provides some very good information but please take the time to look over some Wikipedia conventions about style, in particular things like internal links. By removing previous material (admittedly not very good), you are also removing the article's ties to related articles and materials. This effectively isolates the article and makes it more difficult to "move around" the Wikipedia structure. Large scale edits like this are awkward for other editors, and may lead to concerns over Wiki's copyright restrictions. If you have more material to immediately contribute, I won't do any copy editing or "clean up" toward Wiki style until you are finished. Thanks for your interest in this long abandoned article. WBardwin 05:59, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Name Change

The name change from History of Pottery in the Southern Levant to History of Pottery in Palestine doesn't make sense in my opinion. For starters, the regions are not identical, Palestine being one of many names for a specific area within the Southern Levant. Secondly, the article itself deals with the region of the Southern Levant as a whole, not just the region of Palestine/Israel/Judea/Samaria etc. Thirdly, Palestine is a single name for a specific region within the Southern Levant which has had it name changed multiple times. Using the name Southern Levant is the most accurate choice, as well as the most apolitical. Drsmoo (talk) 09:00, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Please provide sources to back up your analysis of the WP:TITLE policy. Here are mine, as they relate to WP:COMMONNAME:

• Google book search shows no books (ZERO) including the phrase "History of pottery in the Southern Levant" (Please note that the few links shown are all wikipedia mirrors (see VDM_Publishing#Alphascript_and_Betascript_Publishing and Books LLC))
• Google book search shows 55 books including the phrase used in the current title

Also please see these google book charts showing the historical popularity of the various names of the region as a % of books in the google corpus...

• COMPARING Israel,Palestine,Judah,Zion,Holy Land,Levant,Judea,Southern Syria,Southern Levant
• ZOOMING IN ON THE BOTTOM TWO Southern Syria,Southern Levant

The first chart, whilst including a number of the biblical names which have other non-geographic uses, gives a good sense of relative scale. The second chart shows just how WP:FRINGE the term Southern Levant is outside wikipedia.

Oncenawhile (talk) 10:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

To begin with, your statement is factually wrong, as a google.co.uk book search reveals seven books which include the phrase History of Pottery in the Southern Levant, including a book with that title exactly. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bgeNQgAACAAJ&dq=%22history+of+pottery+in+the+Southern+Levant%22&hl=en&ei=EeXETuiCFuLm0QGwnYn2Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA If one searches for "pottery in the southern levant" there are 2,780 results in google books. It is in no way fringe. Of course that is utterly irrelevant, this article is about pottery in the region of the Southern Levant, not in the subsection of the Southern Levant which was at one time called Palestine. Most of the results on the front page of the google book search are from around 100 years ago, they are in no way a contemporaneous guideline of what to call this article. Based on the logic of the Ngrams you posted, we should name the article History of Pottery in Israel, as that is far and away the most popular name currently available (though again, the area does not equal the entire Southern Levant, and this article includes more than just Israel/Palestine). The reason Southern Levant was chosen is because using any specific name like Canaan, Israel, Judea, Palestine etc is only one example of a name for the region, there have been many, and pushing for a single one only makes the article POV. Drsmoo (talk) 11:05, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

You have not read my post properly. I have now underlined the points you missed. Those two underlined points refute everything in your post above. Your last sentence shows the huge knowledge gap you have here. If you are happy to open your mind instead of constantly fighting, I can point you to some scholarly sources which will educate you on all the different names you mentioned and hopefully calm this whole thing down.Oncenawhile (talk) 22:11, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

That is incorrect, History of Pottery in the Southern Levant by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, John McBrewster is not a copy of Wikipedia. Nor are the vast majority of the over 2,500 books with the phrase pottery in the Southern Levant. Nor is the fact that Israel is not a "biblical name" but the current common name for much of the area. Your argument based on google.co.uk book results for a specific phrase is utterly irrelevant. The reason Southern Levant was chosen and agreed with (over 5 years ago btw) is because it avoids the political back and forths of switching between Israel/Palestine etc. You are also contradicting your own argument, when you created the History of Palestine article (against Wikipedia policy btw) you stated that your intention was to leave the History of the Southern Levant article alone because, "These regions are all defined slightly differently, and therefore have different articles. With respect to the history of these regions, there may be other users in addition to the above-mentioned User:Drsmoo who feel strongly that the Southern Levant should have its own history article." http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:History_of_Palestine&diff=418832958&oldid=418739306 This flies in the face of the rationale you are now presenting for moving this article name from History of Pottery in the Southern Levant to History of Potery in Palestine. As you clearly understand that they are not entirely synonymous, you understand why replacing one with the other is unacceptable. With the only reason for doing so, and the reason it was unanimously accepted, being to avoid back and forth POV squabbling due to its status as WP:NPOV. Using the name History of Palestine is utterly POV as it is only one name for a specific time period within the region. In any case I've said my piece on the matter, waiting for opinions from other editors, rather than going back and forth presenting the same viewpoints in perpetuity. Drsmoo (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Please can you spend a bit more time considering your posts before you write them? This is getting embarrassing.

The book you are referring to IS a wikipedia mirror (put the authors' names into google and you'll see). Re biblical names, both Israel and Judah were names of people, and the names of tribes, in addition to later becoming geographic names. Re your use of the word "irrelevant", there is only one thing relevant for this debate and that is WP:TITLE.

Agree with your final point - i.e. let's wait for other's comments. In the meantime, maybe you can spend some time educating yourself on this subject.

Oncenawhile (talk) 23:00, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

It would be worthwhile if you would respond to points rather than posting personal attacks and going on with non sequiturs. You claimed that you copied History of the Southern Levant into History of Palestine because "These regions are all defined slightly differently, and therefore have different articles." Your move of the article history of Pottery in the Southern Levant to history of Pottery in Palestine flies in the face of this supposed justification. As well as flying in the face of WP:NPOV#Naming Drsmoo (talk) 02:09, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Have you still not read WP:TITLE?! There is a whole subsection on "Neutrality in article titles". As we have finally established, the title you support appears in ZERO books. Anyway, to call the term Palestine non-neutral is ignorant. It is and has always been the common scholarly term for the region. Seriously, you should spend a little time reading about the other terms you referred to and you will understand. Oncenawhile (talk) 10:01, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

So what did you mean when you wrote "These regions are all defined slightly differently, and therefore have different articles."? Drsmoo (talk) 14:58, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about historical geography, so I won't come down on a particular side of this debate. However, I should emphasize one point that Drsmoo made, which seems to have gotten lost in this discussion: an article title must accurately reflect the scope of material discussed in the article. This is just common sense, and it trumps any argument based on the relative popularity (or unpopularity) of any given term or phrase.

What is the scope of the term "Palestine"? What region does it refer to? I know that, historically, it refers to a region larger than the one governed by the modern-day Palestinian National Authority. However, I don't know whether it encompasses the entire region denoted by the phrase "Southern Levant". Does it? If it doesn't, then the title "History of Pottery in Palestine" is simply inaccurate, whatever may be said in its favor.

If the terms "Palestine" and "Southern Levant" do not refer to the same geographical area (if Palestine is smaller than the Southern Levant, for instance), then we have two options:

1. Change the title back to "History of Pottery in the Southern Levant" and otherwise leave the article as is.
2. Change the title back to "History of Pottery in the Southern Levant", THEN reduce the article's scope to pottery in Palestine (rather than the whole Southern Levant), THEN change the title to "History of Pottery in Palestine".

Of course, if "Palestine" and "Southern Levant" refer to the exact same geographical area, then nothing that I said above is relevant. But if they do not refer to the same region, then all this arguing about Google Books searches, etc. is pointless. Article titles should reflect the scope of article content. Period. --Phatius McBluff (talk) 18:15, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Phatius, thanks for your comment. The answer to your question is complex, but I will try to summarise my understanding below:

Palestine Region

• The term Palestine Region is the primary English-language term for the region which today comprises Israel and the Palestinian territories, and sometimes part of Western Jordan. See Timeline of the name Palestine for details.
• The boundaries of the region have varied throughout history. They were first defined in modern times by the formation of the British Mandate for Palestine. These boundaries were drawn up following discussions with key Zionist leaders, whose position was formalized by the Zionist Organization at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (see here)
  • In defining the British Mandate, the key difference between the British and Zionist positions was the eastern boundary
  • The "natural border" on the east is the Arabian Desert
  • Naturally the Zionists wanted the largest area possible, and requested Palestine to be defined all the way to the Hejaz Railway on the border of the Arabian Desert. The British ultimately defined the mandate for Palestine as ending at the River Jordan (not as far east)
  • As a result, the eastern boundary as defined by Palestinian nationalism is the River Jordan
• So in summary, the Region of Palestine may or may not include parts of Western Jordan, depending on the context. When discussing culture or ancient history, the "natural eastern boundary" is clearly implied. When talking about "national history" or otherwise, the British Mandate eastern boundary is implied

Israel

• The (mostly secular) Zionist leaders had originally lobbied consistently for a "Jewish home in Palestine"
• Later, Jewish opinion began to sway towards the religious name of the region "Land of Israel" (Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew)
• This name referred to the Biblical Land of the Children of Israel (Israel being another name for Jacob). Israel, or Land of Israel, had never been a geographic name for the region outside of the Bible
• On the Partition of Palestine in 1947-48, Israel was chosen as the name of the new state on 78% of Palestine

Southern Levant

• The term Southern Levant is a neologism which began to become popular following Israel's capture of the remaining 22% of Palestine in the 1967 Six Day War (see this chart)

• It is intended to refer to the Palestine Region with its "natural eastern border", but without using the word "Palestine".

This article

• This article was created in 2004 with the title History of pottery in Palestine, and was later changed to History of pottery in the Southern Levant. The content changes in the intervening period have not changed the scope of the article.

Oncenawhile (talk) 20:22, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we should rename the article "West Bank" to Judea and Samaria. After all, West Bank is a "neologism" which began to become popular after 1967. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=West+Bank&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=10 Drsmoo (talk) 15:45, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

For the purpose of clarification, Israel was in fact the name of a geographic area, and was referenced in the Mesha Stele among many other places. Israel was the name of a territory within the Southern Levant, as Palestine is also the name of a territory within the Southern Levant. You had originally stated that Southern Levant and Palestine were to be defined differently and have different articles, now you seem to be describing them as synonymous. Regarding etymology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant

"The term Levant, which first appeared in English in 1497, originally meant the East in general."

"The term became current in English in the 16th century, along with the first English merchant adventurers in the region"

"Today "Levant" is typically used by archaeologists and historians with reference to the prehistory and the ancient and medieval history of the region, as when discussing the Crusades. The term is also occasionally employed to refer to modern or contemporary events, peoples, states or parts of states in the same region, namely Cyprus, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria (compare with Near East, Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia)."

As an aside, and purely in the interest of maintaining historical fact, as it has little relevance to this discussion your claim regarding the partition is also incorrect. Under the partition plan, the Arab state was to include 43% of the Palestine mandate including all of the major aquifers, while Israel was to include 56% of the Palestine mandate and mostly desert. Drsmoo (talk) 20:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Your use of "many other places" is spurious. I can think of three in total, and all such biblical archaeology finds referring to Israel are disputed by biblical minimalists. Either way, the Mesha Stele, whether authentic or not, refers to the small northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), NOT the Land of Israel. On your final point, 78% refers to the Green Line (Israel) which designated de facto partition post the war. We should probably get back on topic now. Oncenawhile (talk) 22:01, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Please note this discussion has moved to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard at the thread History of pottery in the Southern Levant, History of pottery in Palestine Oncenawhile (talk) 21:29, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No concensus to move to new title, current title does no harm to WP. This article has bigger problems--sourcing--than its current title which is otherwise accurate. Mike Cline (talk) 00:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

---

History of pottery in Palestine → History of pottery in the Southern Levant – Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC) with History of pottery in Palestine becoming a redirect to History of pottery in the Southern Levant. I'm filing this as a neutral party assisting the parties involved in a dispute listed at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard and, except for the observations which I've made in that discussion, express no opinion about the matter. For the arguments, please see the discussions:

• Immediately above in the Name Change section of this talk page,
• On Drsmoo's talk page, and
• At the DRN discussion.

Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:47, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Palestine is a term commonly used to describe this geographic region in academic disciplines like archaelogy, history and art history concerned with the history of pottery. Its use is far more widespread than Southern Levant. Besides it being numerically more common in a google book search, a look at the kinds of. sources that come up shows them to br high quality RS, often definitive works in their fields. I realize some people think the word is purely or primarily political, but this is not necessarily so. It has a long history of conventional use in English and the political situation has not led to its banishment. It is still in wide use today and is thr most common name used to discuss this topic. Tiamut^talk 20:29, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support Southern Levant is a politically neutral term. --PiMaster3 ^talk 21:04, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
• Strong Support -- WE have much too much edit-warring over Israel/Palestine. Historically it was Israel (and Edom and Moab); then Israel and Judea; later Outremer; then Palestine; and 1948-67 Israel and Jordan. The propsoed target is a NPOV solution to the problem. Even if Palestine is the term used by archaeologists, it has become politically charged and we will have endless name-warring, which does no one any good, and is laibale to casue the article to suffer vandalism. The word Palestine is cognate with the Philistines, a people who occupied a region comprising the Gaza Strip and an adjacent area. It has refer to a larger area, but we cannot re-fight the 1948, 1956, 1967, 1974 etc conflicts on the fields of Wikipedia. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:46, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment: I have been watching from the sidelines, but just a quick comment that the post above is overflowing with incorrect facts. I am happy to pick them out one by one if anyone wants, but in the meantime I wanted to make clear to the uninvolved that the editor above has demonstrated very poor knowledge of basic facts in the subject which he has a strong view on. Oncenawhile (talk) 22:01, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose, scholarly usage is uniformly "Palestine". Claiming that the use of "Palestine" has become "politically charged" could just as easily be said of the use of "Israel". By the way, did you know that there is a article List of birds of Israel and an article List of birds of Palestine? Speciate (talk) 05:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, unless someone can show significant scholarly usage for "Southern Levant" (which based on the map at Levant, would seem anyway not to be a particularly good description of the region covered by this article).--Kotniski (talk) 11:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment: In fact, the article specifically describes the region of the Southern Levant, and has done so for years. There are eight references to Southern Levant in the article and three to Palestine, two of which are in the lead which was written when Oncenawhile changed the article name. Your statement is factually wrong and I am skeptical that you've read through the article. It is quite puzzling that you would link to the map at Levant, as opposed to using the map at Southern Levant to inform your opinion. There are several times more scholarly articles discussing "ancient Israel" then there are discussing "ancient Palestine" Making your point ultimately irrelevant, Southern Levant has been the article name for years not because it is more in use than "Israel" or "Palestine" but because it is a neutral term that encompasses both areas. There is an article called Pottery in Palestine which deals with the History of Pottery in Palestine, as opposed to this article, which deals with the History of Pottery in the Southern Levant. Regarding the statement that Palestine being politically charged could just as easily be applied to Israel, I agree, which is why a neutral name was chosen years ago. Before which there were constant back and forth move battles. Drsmoo (talk) 22:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment Hi Drsmoo, I won't rehash all the points we've already debated on this since our discussions are linked to above, but I do want to state my opinion that the arguments you just made in your post have already been thoroughly refuted. You continue to use illogical arguments, such as your proposal to compare the term "ancient Israel" to "ancient Palestine" which apart from being irrelevant, implies that you don't know what the term "Ancient Israel" means. And you refuse to acknowledge that the view exists that "Southern Levant" is not at all neutral, i.e. that it is a neologism coined to serve a political purpose, and using any term other than the scholarly wp:commonname would be non-neutral. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment You have already stated your opinion multiple times. I did not respond to your comment earlier, despite it being incorrect, in an effort to not continue the back and forth which has already been documented. You stated you're not interested in rehashing all the points, but then proceeded to do exactly that, I suggest you stop your bullyish behavior, remove your "comment to my comment" and allow independent editors to voice their view. Drsmoo (talk) 00:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

• I remain unconvinced that "Southern Levant" accurately describes the region covered by this article. It includes Syria, after all, which is very much in the north of the Levant. If anything, we're talking here about the western Levant. But there seems no reason to use this obscure designation when we have the easily recognizable "Palestine" available. --Kotniski (talk) 13:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

This article has described Pottery in the Southern Levant for five years. I'm still flabbergasted that you could actually say with a straight face that the article doesn't describe the Southern Levant, when it has for five years, and there are 8 references in the body to Southern Levant, and only 1 to Palestine. As Oncenawhile posted on the History of the Southern Levant page "as i read the article it includes almost no explanation of the History of Jordan, concentrating almost exclusively on the History of Palestine." http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:History_of_the_Southern_Levant&diff=420405007&oldid=419550617 While this is untrue regarding the History of the Southern Levant article, he is implying that Southern Levant and Palestine are not entirely synonymous and describe different regions, as Oncenawhile also stated when he made the History of Palestine article, "Wikipedia currently has many articles describing overlapping regions in this area - e.g. Palestine, Canaan, Zion, the Land of Israel, Syria Palaestina, Southern Syria, Jund Filastin, Outremer, the Holy Land and the Southern Levant. These regions are all defined slightly differently, and therefore have different articles." (emphasis mine) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:History_of_Palestine&diff=418832958&oldid=418739306 For example, there is an article called Pottery in Palestine which describes the history of Pottery in Palestine. Of course this opinion, that Palestine and Southern Levant describe different areas, was not stated when attempting to change the article name here or elsewhere from Southern Levant. It seems there is a great deal of disingenuousness involved with the attempt to change this article title. Drsmoo (talk) 15:14, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

We can't draw many conclusions from the terms that Wikipedia editors have decided to use in the article - we should be more interested in what terms the sources use. Is the whole article based on the once source that's listed? How does that source (and any others) refer to the region that it's supposed to cover?--Kotniski (talk) 17:07, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

It appears so, while there have been several editors for this article, none seemed to have cited many sources. Drsmoo (talk) 17:42, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - this long-running attempt to excise the word Palestine from the encyclopedia is disruptive in that it attempts to replace standard usage terms in scholarly text with supposedly politically neutral phrases. People, remember that this is supposedly an encyclopedia, and that we are charged with attempting to create a reference work based on the highest quality sources. We cannot disregard the fact that the word used by those sources is nearly uniformly Palestine. This succeeded at History of Palestine because a user was able to get away with move-warring to a preferred name without any consensus. That cannot be taken as evidence of any consensus for the position. The name used by the sources is Palestine, so to should the name used by Wikipedia be Palestine. ~~

"The name used by the sources is Palestine" There aren't any sources in this article. No one is attempting to excise the word Palestine, and the paranoia is what is disruptive. May I also remind you that this discussion is about this particular article, and nothing aside from this particular article.Drsmoo (talk) 18:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

About the closing of this move request: As noted in the template, above, the closing guidelines are set out at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions. In a discussion with Drsmoo on my talk page today, I misinformed him/her that a no consensus result here necessarily results in the title staying the same. The "Determining consensus" section of those guidelines actually says, among other important things:

However, sometimes a requested move is filed in response to a recent move from a long existing name that cannot be undone without administrative help. Therefore, if the closer feels that no consensus has been reached, they may move the article back to the most recent stable name. If the most recent stable name is itself a matter of dispute, closers are expected to use their own judgment in determining the proper destination.

Since this article was named History of pottery in the Southern Levant from 22 June 2006 until it was first changed to the current title on 21 October 2011, that provision would seem to clearly apply if a no-consensus outcome is what eventually happens here. I would also note in passing that in light of the serious issues and controversy concerning this issue, the "Non-admin closure" section of those guidelines would appear to not allow a non-admin closure to this discussion. I continue to express no opinion as to what the best or proper closure of this listing would be. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 18:16, 8 December 2011 (UTC) Clarification added above (underlined). — TransporterMan (TALK) 18:29, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi TransporterMan, thanks again for your input. Just to add that the issue of application is not clear cut, because this article began life with the current name (History of pottery in Palestine), was stable until 2006, and no move discussion was held when the name was changed to Southern Levant. Since this article has a very low view hit rate, the 2006 move appears to have gone under the radar of the community. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:51, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

• Comment It would seem that the conclusion of this discussion will automatically determine the question of whether History of the Southern Levant and History of Palestine should be merged, if indeed they are one and the same area. If this is the case, this discussion should be publicised elsewhere to a wider audience. Chesdovi (talk) 11:35, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, as Oncenawhile, who initiated this move dispute, correctly noted, Southern Levant and Palestine are different areas which need different articles. With that said, I have no issues with this, or that, discussion being publicized to a larger audience. Drsmoo (talk) 16:04, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.