Talk:Jersey dolmens

Archaeology Low‑importance

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Jersey Mid‑importance

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Quotations

If the citations are too long, and need rephrasing, please put a tag so that I can see rather than wholesale deletions, which take the substance of the article to pieces, and reduce it to a Tourist guide.

--TonyinJersey 15:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Neanderthals, Celts and Beaker People

There is quite an emphasis on 'Celts' in this article - Jersey dolmens are "completely unlike Celtic burials", and one of them was "re-used in Celtic times". In neither case is the word linked to any other WP article, or any references or dates given. Which 'Celts' are being referred to? Is there any evidence for Celtic chariot graves in Jersey? Do we mean Germanic Celts from the Rhine and Danube, or do we mean Spanish Celts from the Iberian ice-age refuge? Or do we mean the Celts the Romans wrote about? Did the Romans write anything about invading Jersey, and who they found in residence? I think in modern archaeology the word Celtic is normally reserved for a language, not a migrant or indigenous people. So what are we talking about in this article, and at what dates?

Then we have the section 'Beaker People or Culture?' which skims over the material covered in Beaker culture but in less detail, with many fewer references. What it does not cover is the relationship between this culture and the dolmens of Jersey. It says, "Evidence of such beakers and artefacts have been found in Jersey at Ville ès Nouaux". What evidence? Where is it written up? I don't think one set of beaker fragments justifies a whole section debating this; what we should have is a section on the beaker(s) found, with a link to the main article discussing the culture. Is there any evidence relating the 'Amesbury Archer' to Jersey's dolmens? I don't think it's relevant here.

Branching off to discuss Neanderthals at La Cotte in the WP:LEDE seems similarly confusing and is also entirely irrelevant to these dolmens.

I suggest trimming this article considerably to focus on the subject of the title, and then expanding on that to include cited references to published material about the excavations and the finds. Is there any peer-reviewed, published material on these dolmens to cite? --Nigelj (talk) 16:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Beaker folk feature very heavily in Jacquetta Hawkes "Archaeology of the Channel Islands - Jersey", which was the first complete survey of the whole field; from there it went to G.R. Bailleine's various histories of Jersey. Given its influence in the history of understanding Jersey's archeology, which is still considerable; it is still mentioned in history courses today, I think it should be mentioned.

"Evidence of such beakers and artefacts have been found in Jersey at Ville ès Nouaux" - that is written up in Jacquetta Hawkes book, and from thence takin up in Balleine's History of Jersey.

Some weak points here

The text seem to be based on a single source. Also, "Ville ès Nouaux", is mention twice, one time as a Gallery Grave, and next time as a Cist in Circle. Is there any source for this? --Finn Bjørklid (talk) 19:52, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wait a minute, my book, Peter Hunt's The Dolmes of Jersey, call this "La Ville ès Nouaux", and says there are two structures, the earlier single gallery grave in the south. The second structrue was discovered in 1883, a Cist in Circle, probable date 2800-2300 BC. --Finn Bjørklid (talk) 19:58, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

La Cotte not relevant

I just removed the following from the lede section of this article:

Before that, the dolmen La Cotte de St Brelade has evidence of habitation both by our near cousins, the Neanderthals, and early man. These come from the Palaeolithic or “old stone age”, and belong to the period of the hunter-gatherer, where the tribe would forage in pursuit of food. In the case of La Cotte, as we know from remains, woolly mammoth was part of the diet.

Two reasons:

The WP:LEDE section of an article is meant to summarise the main points made in the article body. This is not a major section of this article, in fact it's (quite correctly) not mentioned again.
La Cotte de St Brelade is not a dolmen. By the very definition given in the preceding paragraph, it is about as far from being a dolmen as you can get.

--Nigelj (talk) 13:08, 18 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]