Word: artifacts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Americans who have reclaimed the lead. The West End is filled with U.S. imports like Rent and Chicago (and Ragtime and The Lion King haven't even applied for passports yet). The one new British hit of the season is a stage version of that very American pop artifact from the '70s, Saturday Night Fever. The show, adapted by Nan Knighton and directed by Arlene Phillips, reprises the familiar story of the Brooklyn kid who makes it big on the disco floor, adding a dose of Vegas-like pizazz and high-octane choreography. Even the old BeeGees songs sound good...
...shroud would be more of an enigma if it were proved to be a 14th century artifact. However, even if it is the handiwork of a person, it seems to represent some force or intelligence beyond our understanding. Perhaps it should be regarded as a revelation from an unknown prophet to a future generation, an expression so tangible that even an age so obsessed with material things as our own might understand it, just as the disciple Thomas was allowed to touch the wounds of our Lord with his own hands in order to believe and have faith. DANIEL MERCER...
...Shroud of Turin were faulty. Although many of the attacks upon them verge on the crackpot, questions regarding the typicality of the sample swatch cannot be summarily dismissed. They are, moreover, unlikely to be settled soon. Far from being eager to hack another piece off his ever more delicate artifact for purposes of a radiocarbon rematch, Cardinal Saldarini called in all outstanding threads and samples without explanation two years ago, announcing only that the church would disown any testing on unreturned remnants. That is bad news, given 20th century humanity's ravenous hunger for literal certainty. Transubstantiation is well...
Radiocarbon dating works by measuring an artifact for an isotope called carbon 14, traces of which are contained in all organic substances, including the flax plants from which the shroud's linen was made. Carbon 14 is unstable and decays over time into another isotope. The amount present in living organisms remains nearly constant because it is continually replaced through the intake of food and air. But when animals and plants die, their level of carbon 14 begins to decrease at a known, fixed rate. Thus the amount of residual carbon 14 in an object provides a measurement...
...DECEPTIVE COAT OF VARNISH? One challenge to the radiocarbon dating that has received a good deal of publicity is that of Dr. Leoncio Garza-Valdes, a San Antonio, Texas, pediatrician with interests in microbiology and archaeology. In 1983, while examining a Mayan jade artifact that art experts claimed was a recent forgery, Garza-Valdes discovered that it was covered by a lacquer-like coating produced by bacteria. Since it also had traces of ancient blood on it that should have been datable by the radiocarbon method, he took it to the University of Arizona dating lab, where scientists scraped...