Talk:Artifact (archaeology)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
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)

merger with cultural artifact
I agree with the suggestion cultural artifact could be merged here. Boris 22:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems that the merger was not carried out. Further discussion is at Talk:Cultural artifact. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 15:49, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

antiquities
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)

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)

artifacts
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).

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.

Article title
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 &#124;  Mclay1  04:17, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * 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)
 * 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 &#124;  Mclay1  06:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Meaning of the word
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)

Inaccuracy in lead, 'artefact' is a US spelling
We clearly can't claim that artifact is the exclusive US spelling. 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)
 * 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)
 * That's completely backwards. Artefact is the British/Commonwealth spelling, artifact is North American. This is confirmable in sections with major dictionaries, , .  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  22:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Do artifact and artefact have different meanings?
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)
 * 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)
 * 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)


 * 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.", 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)
 * LOLWOT may have been a sneezing artefact. — Paleo  Neonate  – 17:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  05:49, 20 October 2017 (UTC); revised 22:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's not 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. , 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.
 * Great research, SMcCandlish! – Corinne (talk) 16:42, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It is indeed., you might want to put this on the talk pages of Artifact (archaeology) Doug Weller  talk 16:55, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Will do.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  22:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * 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 ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  22:24, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

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

Structure of Article Skw29 (talk) 21:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
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)
 * 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)

What is this article actually about?
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? –&#8239;Joe (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 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)
 * 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. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 07:20, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 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:
 * Survival of Artifacts
 * A Short History of Artifacts
 * Explaining the Diversity of Artifacts
 * The Challenge for Archaeologists
 * Analysis and Interpretation
 * –&#8239;Joe (talk) 07:40, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 3 April 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. Favonian (talk) 04:52, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

– Clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC by both pageviews AND longterm significance as the origin of the term upon which the other names on the disambiguation page are based. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:08, 3 April 2022 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Artifact (archaeology) → Artifact
 * Artifact → Artifact (disambiguation)
 * Oppose another ill-thought-out request based on multiple misunderstandings of the guidelines. First, from WP:PTOPIC: a topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. (emphasis added). If we're going to use the pageviews as indicators of usage (something that in this case we have no reason to be doing), then it's not enough that your favoured article should get more views than some other article with the name, it needs to get more views than all other articles combined; from the nom's link it's evident that this is not the case: the proposed primary topic receives significantly less than traffic than the next couple of articles combined. But we don't have to use pageviews in the first place: here the dab is at the primary title so we've got actual data about usage from Wikinav: Artifact (archaeology) receives only about a quarter of the registered outgoing traffic from the dab page, and less than 10% of visits on Artifact result in a click of that link. Second, from WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY: Being the original source of the name is also not determinative; ever considered why Mars, Jupiter or Saturn are not articles about ancient deities? – this is such an obvious point, so it's getting tiring having to repeat it to an experienced editor. What matters is the relative long-term significance. The nom hasn't made any argument to this effect, but the existence of this nomination entails the highly implausible claim that the archaeological concept has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than, say, Cultural artifact and Artifact (error). – Uanfala (talk) 12:50, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Like Uanfala, I find it very hard to believe that any sense of the word artifact is the primary topic. It's too general a concept and there are too many specialist meanings. Pageviews are a poor metric; comparing instead Google Scholar searches for artifact|artefact archaeology and artifact|artefact error, the latter is eight times more common. I also don't think that the archaeological meaning is the origin of the others. The OED has usages of the generic meaning "an object made or modified by human workmanship" going back to the 17th century, which is before archaeology existed, so it's perfectly plausible that they came into use independently. I probably even use artifact (error) roughly as often as artifact (archaeology) in my work, and I'm an archaeologist. Better to stick with the disambiguation page. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 13:42, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose somewhat per Joe Roe. I actually think the "man-made object" meaning is primary, but this article only covers a narrow range of that meaning (artifacts that have been dug up). We also have Cultural artifact, a somewhat silly social sciences article, but really nothing to cover the increasingly widespread American use in art history & museum language of "artifact" for all and any physical works of art & decorative arts of all types (I'm not suggesting such an article is needed).  So leave it as it is (or set up a redirect to work of art or something). Johnbod (talk) 15:05, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose some of the meanings (such as artifact (software development) are subsidiary to the archaeology term, but Artifact (error) is completely different. Neither topic is primary. User:力 (powera,  π,  ν ) 00:14, 9 April 2022 (UTC)