Astronomers have discovered an object in our solar system that is larger than Pluto. They are calling it the 10th planet, but already that claim is contested.
The new world's size is not at issue. But the very definition of planethood is.
This ought to sound familiar. We tend to be quite fond (or used to anyway) of using a term for some apparent phenomenon or concept and then finally getting around to figuring out what exactly it means later on. "Culture" has probably been defined at least three different ways for every anthropologist who has ever tried to define it. Other concepts have followed similar pattern: cultural complexity, city, city-state, race, etc. In many cases, when faced with an oft-used term that needs a formal definition, we relapse back into the old saw about pornography/obscenity: we know it when we see it. Most of the time, this amounts to merely enumerating the characteristics that we tend to associate with the concept rather than actually defining the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership, which ought to be derived from some theoretical framework. This is fairly common, even at the level of artifacts: we tend to call an "arrowhead" an arrowhead because it looks like things we call arrowheads now. The problems start to crop up when you want to use these categories for comparison across time and/or space. When is an "arrowhead" actually a "spearhead"? What do you call an "arrowhead" that broke and was then modifed and used as a "scraper"?
This isn't exactly the same thing as is going on in astronomy. Whether something is a "planet" or "non-planet" has little to do with the modern business of astronomy. That is, calling Pluto a "Kuiper Belt object" won't go back and call into question Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
Back to more prosaic posts
7000-year-old stone tools discovered in Bam region
A team of archaeologists recently discovered some 7000-year-old stone tools in Kerman Province, the Persian service of the Cultural Heritage News (CHN) agency reported on Saturday.
Researchers say that the tools, which were unearthed at the historical site of Tall-e Atashin, located 30 kilometers from Bam, date back to the 5th millennium BC.
“Once we were informed that villagers were farming in the region, our experts began conducting excavations, leading to this precious discovery,” Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization expert Narges Ahmadi said.
More archaeology + beer Archaeologists Trace Mystery Wall Not to War, but to Beer
"Who would have built a fort like that, that no historian has ever talked about?" asked Joan H. Geismar, one of several urban archaeologists in New York - Amanda Sutphin, Mary Habstritt and Diana diZerega Wall were others - who looked into the mystery.
They traced the wall to the Clausen & Price ale and porter brewery, which stood on the spot from 1871 (when the company was known as Clausen & Bauer) until 1910.
Experts say quarry bones are old
A number of human bones found at a quarry have been found to be hundreds of years old.
The remains were uncovered at the Old Quarry on Robinswood Hill in Gloucester on Friday night by two teenage boys.
The skull, leg and arm were exhumed from the quarry face and taken to the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, where they were examined by an archaeologist.
A police spokesman said the expert had revealed the bones were several hundred years old, and not suspicious.
That's the whole thing.
Emperor's head found in sewer Emperor's decline and fall
A SEWER might be no place for an emperor, but that is where archaeologists have discovered a marble statue of the head of Constantine, one of Rome’s greatest leaders.
Eugenio La Rocca, the superintendent for Rome’s monuments, said that archaeologists found the 61cm (2ft) head while clearing an ancient drainage system in the Roman Forum, the centre of public life in the ancient city.
HT for the faux headline to Kate D at The Perfect World.
Teotihuacan tombs found during Mexico dig
Mexican archaeologists who were carrying out exploratory digs came upon a pre-Hispanic domestic altar and three tombs in an area near the famed Teotihuacan pyramids, 50km north-east of Mexico City.
The National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH) said on Wednesday that the discoveries were made in the central marketplace of San Juan Teotihuacan, a town located two kilometres from the Teotihuacan site.
Something else we'd never heard of Log boat begins year's drying out
An Iron Age log boat has begun a year of drying out after spending a decade buried in sugar.
Archaeologists at the Poole, Dorset, Waterfront Museum say it is the first time that sucrose treatment has been used in the UK.
The boat is now in a specially-built drying chamber at the museum where it will stay for 12 months until it can be displayed to the public.
The boat, made in 300 BC, was discovered in Poole Harbour in 1964.
We'd never come across this method of wood conservation before but apparently it's fairly common:
In general, water-soluble substances, such as starch and sugar, are the first to be leached from waterlogged wood, along with mineral salts, coloring agents, tanning matters, and other bonding materials. In time, through hydrolysis, cellulose in the cell walls disintegrates, leaving only a lignin network to support the wood. . .As a result of the disintegration of cellulose and lignin, spaces between the cells and molecules increase, and the wood becomes more porous and permeable to water. . .If the wood is exposed to air, the excess water evaporates, and the resulting surface tension forces of the evaporating water cause the weakened cell walls to collapse, creating considerable shrinkage and distortion.
. . .
The conservation of waterlogged wood is a two-fold process that involves (1) the incorporation of a material into the wood that will consolidate and confer mechanical strength to the wood while the water is being removed (e.g., PEG- or sugar-bulking treatments), and (2) the removal of the excess water by a method which will prevent any shrinkage or distortion of the wood (e.g., solvent- or freeze-drying).
We knew about polyethylene glycol but not the sucrose method.
Roman antiquity saved from decline
ONE of the most important Roman antiquities in Western Europe, at Brading on the Isle of Wight, was reopened by the Duke of Edinburgh yesterday after a £3.1 million mission to prevent its decay.
Discovered in the 1880s, the spectacular 3rd-century mosaic floors of an opulent villa, which remain in near-pristine condition, were threatened when their protective building was found to be unsafe.