I'll be editing the Saharan Rock Art wiki page in effort to improve the quality of the page and add useful information that relates to the topic. The existing page has a brief summary stating that the Sahara has a lot of rock art and that there are more than three thousand rock art sites. It then lists names of popular rock art sites, and goes into detail describing the importance of Tassili n'Ajjer. The author then has a list of subtopics under Prehistoric Sahara with no description, therefore I'm not sure what purpose they hold in the article. There's a paragraph describing the Saharan Archaeological Research Association (SARA) and how the Sahara has a very unpredictable climate and how the climate there has dramatically changed over time. The article also includes dates of when Saharan rock art was created.
The main issue with this article is that the author did not cite any of their information. My improvements to the article will include citations, as well as more detailed information from them. I will expand the introduction and go into more depth about how Saharan rock art has taught people about the culture of the civilizations and groups that created them. Describing the importance will intrigue readers, I will then elaborate on the culture aspect later on in the article. I will add a section describing the archaeology that is involved in the rock art, how it was discovered and how it is important to the archaeological record. I think adding a section describing the peoples of the time as well as the impact it's had on our learning of them will be helpful to readers. As for editing the list of sites, I'll leave the list, but go into more detail about the popular ones such as how the previous author did for Tassili n'Ajjer.
Citations:
Biagetti, S., Ait Kaci, A., di Lernia, S. (in press). "The ‘written landscape’ of the central Sahara: Recording and digitizing the Tifinagh inscriptions in the Tadrart Acacus Mountains". In: M. Kominko (Ed.), From Dust to Digital Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
Anderson, Helen. "Chariots in Saharan rock art: An aesthetic and cognitive review". From Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, The British Museum, UK. Published July 29 2016.
Soler, Joaquin. "Cattle without herdsmen: Animal and human beings in the prehistoric rock art of the Western Sahara". From Quaternary International Volume 410, Part A, 29 July 2016, Pages 93–102.
Guagnin, M., Jennings, R. "Rock art imagery as a proxy for Holocene environmental change: A view from Shuwaymis, NW Saudi Arabia". From Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford. May 12 2016.
Paul Bahn, et al. "Recent Work on Saharan rock art (2010-2014)". From Rock Art Studies: News of the World V, Oxford: Archaeopress, (pp. 55-74). 2016.
- @Theodorerex: Nice job so far! I think your plans sound great - ambitious but doable! Here's a website that you might find useful - lots of good information under the "Rock art in Africa" tab: http://africanrockart.org/. One quick thing, you'll have to delete or edit the "Stone Ages" section, since it's completely wrong (the Neolithic is not the same thing, for example, as the Later Stone Age in Africa. I think we could also try to make a good map of rock art sites - we can talk about how to do that in class. Overall, good work! Looking forward to reading this article. Ninafundisha (talk) 19:58, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
| Rock Art Sites | |
|---|---|
  Location of Tassili n'Ajjer sites on map of Saharan Desert | |
| Location | Algeria |
| Coordinates | 26°19′59″N 5°0′0″E / 26.33306°N 5.00000°E |