Talk:Artifact (archaeology)

  This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 June 2020 and 3 August 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Skw29. Peer reviewers: Mij52.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:47, 16 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the suggestion cultural artifact could be merged here. Boris 22:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

Seems that the merger was not carried out. Further discussion is at Talk:Cultural artifact. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 15:49, 27 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

at the moment this redirects here, but there is no mention of, or relevant link to, what is surely the commonest use of the word, namely to mean works of art from the ancient world, which may never have had an archaeological phase of existance at all, or whose archaeology is quite unknown. Johnbod 16:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

several things.i disagree on this phrase "any object made or modified by a human culture". i would escuude the world "culture". an artifact is not modified by a culture. it it modified by a human. cultures per say cannot modify anything (at least not in the physical realm). this article in general needs to be cleaned up and improved. i will work on it if i can. this is such an important part of archaeology it is terrible that this article is lacking so much. --Tainter 17:39, 8 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

Are these artifacts useful to the people in the past?

Are these useful for us? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.244.187.184 (talk) 02:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC).Reply

If we had the technology to transport someone from the the present to the place where the dead go then we might have the answer.

Why is "artifact" spelt the American way but "archaeology" spelt the British way? Shouldn't the title be either Artefact (archaeology) or Artifact (archeology)? McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:17, 20 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

It's been like that since the first edit. Is archeology the exclusive US spelling? Maybe we're in Canadian English. Johnbod (talk) 18:56, 20 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

According to Oxford Dictionaries Online, both "artifact" and "archeology" are US spellings, although Canada, in all likelihood, has probably borrowed the American spellings. According to Oxford, "archaeology" is actually the most common spelling in America, with archeology a variant. It's possibly because archaeologists prefer older things, and "archaeology" is the older spelling. Well, case solved. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

I can't find any evidence that artis means crafted and arte means enclosed or buried item. In fact the next sentence goes on to say that they are just different spellings from different places. So the words must have the same meaning. The text from the dictionary link defines the words as "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest". Which fits well in this section.

"arte" + "factum" is not correct, the Latin root is "artificium", the thing that is made. Regardless, nothing to do with buried items, rather, items that have been crafted (which give evidence of their creators). VєсrumЬа ►TALK 16:42, 19 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

We clearly can't claim that artifact is the exclusive US spelling.[1][2] In any case, the statement was never sources. I've removed it, but I'm not adverse to a replacement stating that both spellings are used in America. Doug Weller talk 09:23, 26 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Oh well, please add that - there are sources here. The belief that "artefact" is a spelling mistake is incredibly common among passing editors from somewhere, & they are always "correcting" it. Johnbod (talk) 13:48, 26 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

That's completely backwards. Artefact is the British/Commonwealth spelling, artifact is North American. This is confirmable in sections with major dictionaries [3], [4], [5].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  22:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

  Moved from User talk:Doug Weller

I was taught in English language class that artifact and artefact are both legitimate words, with very different meanings. Artifact is a medical term that means, for example, something caught in your teeth. Artefact, on the other hand, means something of historical significance. There is a common misspelling to write artifact when you mean artefact. This is not a geographical abnormality but is rather an ignorance issue. This is not one of those things where Americans decided to rewrite the English language to make it easier for them, like with the case of colour (color). Rather, this is simply a mistake. All I was doing was correcting a mistake, and you choose to be a whopping great jerk about it. It is a very minor thing, but I expect you to correct that mistake, because otherwise you look like an idiot. Thank you for not being so rude and obnoxious. Mister Sneeze A Lot (talk) 14:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

(talk page stalker) Good work by Doug, I'm afraid, and not at all rude, and explained by the nice people on your Talk page. -Roxy the dog. bark 14:19, 16 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

They may be rude, but they are factually accurate:

ar•ti•fact or ar•te•fact (ˈɑr təˌfækt)

n.

1. any object made by human beings, esp. with a view to subsequent use.

2. a handmade object, as a tool, or the remains of one, as a shard of pottery, :::belonging to an earlier time or cultural stage, esp. such an object found at an :::archaeological excavation.

3. a substance or structure not naturally present in the matter being observed but :::formed by artificial means, as during preparation of a microscope slide.

4. a spurious observation or result arising from preparatory procedures.

5. any feature that is not naturally present but is a product of an extrinsic agent.

These terms are still in use, if not in common use. C. W. Gilmore (talk) 15:03, 16 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

Thanks both of you. This is pretty ironic, considering that the editor's first response when I tried to explain it politely was "LOLWOT no. I hope you didn't change that lol." and then "It goes against everything written in any English language text, but if you say so, ok." @Mister Sneeze A Lot:, I'm not clear why my polite response was rude and your was not. My OED only has one meaning for artifact, saying it is the US spelling of artefact. No suggestion it is a medical term. You might want to look at our disambiguation page artifact which does mention "Iatrogenic artifact, a medical problem created by medical treatment". Hm, are we being trolled? Source for "something caught in your teeth"? Doug Weller talk 15:43, 16 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

LOLWOT may have been a sneezing artefact. —PaleoNeonate – 17:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

It's not impossible that "artifact" and "artefact" could have distinct meanings in different fields, or even the same one, while also being a pure ENGVAR matter in most other contexts. We'd need to see proof of that, though, and I cannot find any at all. A similar case that is actually easily sourceable is "provenance" versus "provenience"; these are synonyms in most contexts, but art history pretty exclusively uses the former spelling, while archaeology, paleontology, and related fields use both with a markedly different meaning for each (the provenience is exactly where/when/how an object was [re]discovered, while its provenance is its custodial history after that, as in the art history sense). "Artifact" and "artefact" are entirely synonymous in those fields, just being US/Canadian vs. UK/Commonwealth spellings, respectively.

Digging into my topical dictionary, encyclopedia, and style guide collection for a moment (and without duplicating what was cited above and at User talk:Mister Sneeze A Lot): Chambers Dictionary of Science and Technology gives them as synonymous, but only provides a general definition, nothing field-specific. New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors has "artifact" as US spelling of "artefact". Scientific English (3rd ed.) doesn't address these words. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (5th ed.) gives archaeo., medical, histology, and communications definitions, all under "artifact", and doesn't include "artefact" at all. Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology (1992 ed.) gives archaeo., radiology, and histology definitions, all under "artifact", with "artefact" listed as an alternative spelling. Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary (28th ed.) gives general, histology/microscopy, and radiology definitions, under "artifact", with "artefact" listed as an alt. spelling. American Medical Association Manual of Style (10th ed.) gives a medical statistics definition, as "artifact", and does not mention "artefact".

Hard to prove a negative, but so far that's a lot of evidence against the idea of "artefact" and "artifact" having distinct meanings as terms of art, ever, and zero evidence in favo[u]r of the idea. Mister Sneeze A Lot's "It goes against everything written in any English language text" when a quick examination of even specialist works in the fields he's talking about shows this assertion to be bunkum, is a strong indication of Dunning–Kruger effect.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  05:49, 20 October 2017 (UTC); revised 22:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

Great research, SMcCandlish!  – Corinne (talk) 16:42, 20 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

It is indeed. @SMcCandlish:, you might want to put this on the talk pages of Artifact (archaeology) Doug Weller talk 16:55, 20 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

Will do.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  22:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

PS: I would not be surprised if the artifact spelling had become more common field-wide in computing and science contexts heavily dependent on computing, for the same reason that program has come to dominate even British computing despite preferences for programme otherwise. None of the works consulted so far indicate such a shift, however, and it may be too soon to source one if it exists.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  22:24, 20 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

This article should be titled

Artefact (archaeology)

Why? Because most of the English speaking world use British English.

There's thousands, maybe even millions of articles/topics/subjects on websites like Wikipedia and Quora, which aren't specific to America, yet use American English, and American titles, even though Americans are in the minority.

That needs to change. The USA need to realise it's not the centre of the Earth, and start using the English language that the world uses, in articles which aren't specific to the USA. Danstarr69 (talk) 22:59, 3 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

See WP:ENGVAR, and above here. This is well-trodden ground. Johnbod (talk) 14:47, 4 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

I believe that the article could be better organized. It would be better suited if it started with big ideas and broad categories of artifacts and then dove deeper into these as the article progressed. Skw29 (talk) 21:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Isn't that what it does, sort of? It's very short & that's the trouble as I see it. Johnbod (talk) 02:04, 5 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

The recently-added #Ethics struck me as out of place, since we already have whole articles on archaeological looting and repatriation. For sure both of these topics involve artefacts, but "artefact" is such a basic concept, covering them here seems like, I don't know, having a section on animal testing in animal.

Then again, I'm not sure what this article should include, beyond the dictionary definition of "artefact" as used in archaeology. A lot of the article is extended definitions, including repetitive descriptions of the difference between artefacts, ecofact, biofact, etc. which could easily be reduced to a sentence or two. The two main sections, context (which is mostly just more definitions) and analysis, are so general as to be impossible to summarise and end up as random collections of examples.

Can anyone help me out? What should the focus of this article be? What sections would a GA-worthy version of it have? – Joe (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

I agree on the new ethics bit, especially the last para. The same guy has been spamming similar stuff around since he created Mwazulu Diyabanza on the 7th (is he notable I wonder?). The rest of it has a lot of studenty padding. But the definition and usage of the term is quirky & worth some expanding. Is there a cut-off date after which things stop being "artefacts", even if found by a proper welly-wearing archaeologist? Equally, what about things found by mere eg art historians? I have to say the duplication of the category structure to include rather pointless "artefact" categories drives me nuts, and the refusal of their creators to integrate them into the general structures. Johnbod (talk) 22:12, 10 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

That's a good point, maybe I'm too used to the term to see that we use it in a peculiar way. It's supposed to be very general: anything intentionally made by a human being (or our cousins) and in that sense the age or context of discovery doesn't matter. One of my teachers insisted that recording every artefact you find—every coke can and piece of asbestos—was the only proper way to completely document a site. Debates about what is or isn't an artefact, and hence awkward terms like "geofact" and "manuport", tend to only crop up for very early periods, where there can be doubt about whether that beaten-up rock is a stone tool or just a rock. Maybe I'll try to add a section on that. – Joe (talk) 07:20, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

To try and answer my own question I looked through other encyclopaedias for similar articles. The only one that had one is the Encyclopedia of Archaeology, which has a fairly long article with this structure:

1. Survival of Artifacts
2. A Short History of Artifacts
3. Explaining the Diversity of Artifacts
4. The Challenge for Archaeologists
5. Analysis and Interpretation

– Joe (talk) 07:40, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply