Artifact (archaeology)

An artifact, or artefact see American and British English spelling differences, is a general term for an item featured or given shape by humans, such(a) as the tool or a create of art, especially an thing of archaeological interest. In archaeology, the word has become a term of specific nuance as living as is defined as an object recovered by archaeological endeavor, which may be a cultural artifact having cultural interest.

Artifact is the general term used in archaeology, while in museums the equivalent general term is ordinarily "object", & in art history perhaps artwork or a more specific term such as "carving". The same section may be called all or all of these in different contexts, and more specific terms will be used when talking approximately individual objects, or groups of similar ones.

Artifacts live in numerous different forms and can sometimes be confused with ecofacts and features; all three of these can sometimes be found together at archaeological sites. They can also pretend up in different nature of context depending on the processes that realise acted on them over time. A wide brand of analyses take place to analyze artifacts and provide information on them. However, the process of analyzing artifacts through scientific archaeology can be hindered by the looting and collecting of artifacts, which sparks ethical debate.

Context

Artefacts can come from any archaeological context or mention such as:

Examples increase stone tools, pottery vessels, metal objects such as weapons and items of personal adornment such as buttons, jewelry and clothing. Bones that show signs of human modification are also examples. Natural objects, such as fire cracked rocks from a hearth or plant fabric used for food, are classified by archaeologists as ecofacts rather than as artefacts.

Artefacts survive as a or done as a reaction to a impeach of behavioural and transformational processes. A behavioural process involves acquiring raw materials, manufacturing these for a specific aim and then discarding after use. Transformational processes begin at the end of behavioural processes; this is when the artefact is changed by nature and/or humans after is has been deposited. Both of these processes are significant factors in evaluating the context of an artefact.

The context of an artefact can be broken into two categories: primary context and secondary context. A matrix is a physical build within which an artefact exists, and a provenience indicated to a specific location within a matrix. When an artefact is found in the realm of primary context, the matrix and provenience have non been changed by transformational processes. However, the matrix and provenience are changed by transformational processes when referring to secondary context. Artefacts exist in both contexts, and this is taken into account during the analysis of them.

Artefacts are distinguished from stratigraphic features and ecofacts. Stratigraphic features are non-portable keeps of human activity that add hearths, roads, deposits, trenches and similar remains. Ecofacts, also subjected to as biofacts, are objects of archaeological interest submitted by other organisms, such as seeds or animal bone.

Natural objects that humans have moved but non changed are called manuports. Examples include seashells moved inland or rounded pebbles placed away from the water action that made them.

These distinctions are often blurred; a bone removed from an animal carcass is a biofact but a bone carved into a useful implement is an artefact. Similarly there can be debate over early stone objects that could be either crude artefact or naturally occurring and happen to resemble early objects made by early humans or Homo sapiens. It can be difficult to distinguish the differences between actual man-made lithic artefact and geofacts – naturally occurring lithics that resemble man-made tools. this is the possible to authenticate artifacts by examining the general characteristics attributed to man-made tools and local characteristics of the site.

Artefacts, features and ecofacts can all be located together at sites. Sites may include different arrangements of the three; some might include all of them while others might only include one or two. Sites can have clear boundaries in the form of walls and moats, but this is not always the case. Sites can be distinguished through categories, such as location and past functions. How artefacts exist at these sites can administer archaeological insight. An example of this would be utilising the position and depth of buried artefacts to establish a chronological timeline for past occurrences at the site.

Modern archaeologists take care to distinguish material culture from ethnicity, which is often more complex, as expressed by Carol Kramer in the dictum "pots are not people."