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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9077184" data-attributes="member: 42582">Whether we consider a beaver's dam, or a bee's honeycomb, to be an artefact or not seems a little arbitrary - or, perhaps, it seems like something where we could go one way or the other depending on what feature of being an artefact that we want to foreground. If we want to emphasise the dam or comb's constructed nature, we might liken it to an artefact by calling it one, or by contrasting it with (say) a natural obstruction of a river flow. If we want to contrast the dam or comb's nature with something built by humans, we might contrast it with a human-built dam by calling it natural.It seems a little pointless to insist that there is a truth here one way or the other.</blockquote>