Artifact (archaeology)

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In archaeology, an artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human culture, and often one later recovered by some archaeological endeavor. Examples include stone tools such as projectile points, pottery vessels, metal objects such as buttons or guns, and items of personal adornment such as jewellery and clothing. Other examples include bone that show signs of human modification, fire cracked rocks from a hearth or plant material used for food.

The study of these objects is an important part of the field of archaeology, although the degree to which they represent the social groupings that created them is a subject over which archaeological theoreticians argue. Focusing on the artifact alone can produce very intensive and enlightening work on the object itself but can ignore surrounding factors which may shed further light on the manufacturing society. Traditional museums are often criticised for being too artifact-led, that is by displaying items without any contextual information about their purpose or the people who made them.

Artifacts can come from any archaeological context or source such as:

Artifacts are distinguished from the main body of the archaeological record such as stratigraphic features, which are nonportable remains of human activity, such as hearths, roads, or deposits and remains, and from biofacts or ecofacts, which are objects of archaeological interest made by other organisms, such as seeds or animal bone.

Natural objects which have been moved but not changed by humans are called manuports. Examples would include seashells moved inland or rounded pebbles placed away from the water action that would have fashioned them.

These distinctions are often blurred; for instance, a bone removed from an animal carcass is a biofact, but a bone carved into a useful implement is an artifact. Similarly there can be debate over early stone objects which may be crude artifacts or which may be naturally occurring phenomena that only appear to have been used by humans.

[edit] Use of artifacts in archaeological analysis

Artifacts are often called "finds" when handled during archaeological excavation. Artifacts are related to the archaeological record by their position defined by the Archaeological context they are discovered in. This is important for Seriation and relative dating analysis and is closely related to work post excavation with the use of a Harris matrix created during excavation. An analysis of finds is often made during excavation for the purpose of spot dating, which is a process of assessing dates of contexts being excavated. It is used as a form of confirmation concerning phasing and highlighting any potential for further discovery on a given site as it progresses. Spot dating tends to rely on pottery typology. This pottery dating analysis was pioneered by 19th century archaeologists such as Georg Loeschcke. Apart from dating and supporting the process of excavation, artifacts lend themselves to a host of post excavation disciplines.

[edit] See also