An announcement from the History Institute of the North Korean Academy of Social Sciences shocked the archaeological world Thursday, along with pretty much everyone else. It seems a “unicorn lair” from Korean mythology has been discovered in Pyongyang, the capital.

Reporting in the West has varied from basically straight (from U.S. News and World Report) to pretty hilarious (as in this from Gizmodo), to short pieces that suggest North Korea might be trying to get back at The Onion, to this from Macleans that includes a graf about Bigfoot.

One thing I stress to my students is to evaluate the analogies we use to classify different kinds of objects and sites. In other words, what leads us to refer to something as a ritual object vs. an ordinary tool, why do we say a particular building is a temple rather than a house, and…