artifact
noun
Artifact — an object that bears the unmistakable mark of human making
Definition
A man-made object taken as a whole
In depth
An artifact is any object made by human hands or human intention, considered as a single, complete thing — a tool, a carving, a coin — set apart from whatever exists naturally and without design. The word carries an implicit history, since to call something an artifact is to assert that a maker, and therefore a purpose, once stood behind it.
Origin
The word combines Latin arte, by skill or art, with factum, made — a literal compound meaning, simply, 'made by skill.' Its modern archaeological use, naming the recovered objects of past civilizations, dates largely to the nineteenth century, when the discipline began formally distinguishing human-made remains from the merely geological evidence surrounding them.
Usage examples
"The archaeologists catalogued each artifact recovered from the dig, certain that even broken pottery could speak."
"Her grandmother's letters had become, over the decades, artifacts of a vanished way of speaking and feeling."
"The museum's most prized artifact was a small bronze figure whose original purpose no scholar had ever determined."
How to use it
Artifact is a richly evocative word for archaeology, memoir, and material culture writing, often used to suggest that an ordinary object carries traces of a vanished history or intention worth recovering. It implies care and curatorial attention more than the plain word 'object' does.
Related concepts
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