Talk:Mary Rose/2013/April

Edit request on 14 April 2013

Please change the final sentence in the article from ....

"In September 2009 the temporary Mary Rose display hall was finally closed to visitors to facilitate construction of the new £35 million museum building, which is expected to open to the public in 2012.[141]"

to ....

"In September 2009 the temporary Mary Rose display hall was finally closed to visitors to facilitate construction of the new £35 million museum building, which is expected to open to the public on the 31st May 2013.[141]"

because the Mary Rose museum is currently quoting this opening date on their web site as referenced by citation 141.

Thank you. T.shed (talk) 12:03, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Done Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:59, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 25 April 2013

Someone with access to edit please correct this wording thanks, currently says" Analysis of oxygen isotopes in teeth indicates that some were also of southern European ancestry" Oxygen Isotopes don't reveal anything about ancestry, they indicate where the person was living during the time their adult teeth were forming. "Origin" would be a better word than "ancestry". Beelzebubbles1972 (talk) 05:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

That sounds sensible and logical, but unfortunately the sentence in question is supported by two citations: Gardiner (2005), p. 12 and Stirland (2000), p. 149. Both look to be authoritative, so any change needs to be done by someone with access to both books to check the wording. If you can provide an authoritative citation to support your case then the article could be changed, possible with a hidden note left for editors to check up on the quote. I'm sorry to put a damper on your first contribution to Wikipedia, it is valued, and I would hope it will be investigated in due course. Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:33, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The source of this "quote" isn't available online, and it's unlikely anyone will ever look it up on paper, so this plainly-wrong wording will be up on Wikipedia forever because someone badly paraphrased an inaccessible source. Oh well, I tried, but if policy prefers to leave something up that everyone knows is wrong....meh. Beelzebubbles1972 (talk) 10:13, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The original poster has a good point, this does read as a mistaken paraphrasing. Oxygen isotopes are not connected with genealogical ancestry, and even if you use ancestry in possibly too broad a sense to mean the geographical location of the seamen's ancestors, this is wrong as well. The oxygen isotopes show where the seaman lived as a child, his ancestry may actually be from a completely different part of the world, but the isotopes will show where he personally happened to grow up. While I'm not able to access Gardiner or Stirland, Cheryl A. Fury's The Social History of English Seamen, 1485-1649, p. 73 and Roberta Gilchrist's Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course, p. 55, both look at the oxygen isotope analysis of the Mary Rose seamen and relate the findings only to geographical origins of the individual seamen, and not to any putative ancestry. For interest, what oxygen isotopes can and can't tell us, and some of the problems of using this analysis to make definite statements about the migration patterns of individuals can be seen in this academic text. Benea (talk) 10:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Further to this point, the work on oxygen isotopes was carried out in a 2009 study by Lynne Bell of Simon Fraser University's School of Criminology. Bell's own account of her work is here. Note that she states that her results 'indicate that a significant proportion of the crew did not originate in Britain, but rather they came from warmer, more southerly, regions of Europe.' 'Originate', nothing about 'ancestry'. Her thesis was that these sailors had poor English skills, could not respond efficiently to orders in a sudden crisis, and this contributed to the loss of the ship. Her thesis was challenged by A. R. Millard of Durham University, and Hannes Shroeder at Oxford (their 2010 article in the Journal of Archaeological Science, '‘True British sailors’: a comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose' is downloadable online) which after studying other indicators besides oxygen isotopes, found that a far smaller proportion of the sample used by Bell could be said to have originated outside Britain. Note the wording in the text - 'origins of 18 men' and 'conclude that only one of the 18 sailors demonstrably spent his childhood outside the British Isles.' Nothing about ancestry of course. Benea (talk) 10:59, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Excellent! Thankyou very much for that, any objections routed in WP:NOR or WP:V are clearly overcome. To Beelzebubbles1972: please see your talk page. I'll make the change in a few moments. Oops, you beat me to it 1 :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)