Kofun Burials, an analysis of a website

This weeks blog prompt is to analyze a website featuring the same ideas that we have chosen for our final group project. We created marking rubrics and are to look at this website in the same light as we would be marked on our final websites. I chose this site with detailed analysis of ancient Japanese Kofun burials, a key component to our group project. Kofun burials are ancient mounds constructed for deceased elite. My particular section of the project focuses on the Haniwa, clay grave goods commonly associated with these massive burials. The site under analysis, is more broad, looking at the entire Kofun culture instead of just at grave goods. This plays more into our entire group project, rather than just my section of the grave goods.

The first section of our marking rubric references and citation styles. The site itself doesn't have many references stating where they got their content information from, however it does contain quite a few "suggested readings". All articles are clearly and correctly referenced in a particular style, I would give this a: 3/4. Although you do not know particularly where the website content came from, the suggested readings are properly referenced and enhance the information provided on the website.

The second section relates to the first, as it is about quality of research. The suggested readings mentioned on this site are all from academic journals, leading me to believe that the content in the body of the website also came from academic journals. I would give this 3/4 as well, the content is consistent with other analyses and the further readings are academic.

Section three is about pictures. Unfortunately this page contains no pictures. Pictures are crucial to this topic, as it discusses grave goods and the size and scale of the tombs are important in understanding their scope in society at the time: 0/4.

The text on the website is fairly clear and concise, however a little monotonous without the addition of pictures. Also some of the text is feels overly wordy and clumsy: 3/4

Grammar and spelling on the website appear to be fairly good, at least no distracting mistakes that I could detect: 3/3

Appearance of the website is fairly simple, but easy to navigate. Despite the absence of pictures, the page is broken up by easy to read charts that help give a visual aid to the time periods and various types of tomb shapes: 2/2

It appears that this page was written by one person, so flow and coherency is not an issue. The text, however, is broken up into clear sections and thoughts, that have flow to them: 2/2.

Total: 16/24 (66%)

This might appear to be a harsh mark, however the scale of these tombs is massive and without visual representations the implications behind the making these tombs is lost. I attached a picture below, just taken from a National Geographic page I found on google, to help stress the importance of imaged when discussing this topic. Also because so far, this blog post has no pictures.