Ancient artifacts of Siberia, which parasites hide from us and destroy. Tag: Artifacts Artifact definition

Archeology is an amazing science that reveals to modern man the secrets of past millennia. The work of scientists in this field is to search for material traces left by ancient civilizations. An object found by archaeologists during excavations is called an “artifact.” This is any artificially created object that has symbolic meaning.

Types of artifacts

We are accustomed to understand by this name priceless antiquities found by archaeologists or treasure hunters. In fact, an artifact is a very broad concept that covers different areas. Let's look at some of the meanings of this word.

If we take archeology, here ancient artifacts appear as objects found during excavations and created by man. These can be tools, weapons, jewelry, dishes, processed bone, and even coals from a fire once lit by ancient people.

In culture, an artifact is an object created by a person and has a special meaning. Moreover, this can be not only a material object, but also folklore, superstitions or scientific theories.

This word is well known to fans of computer games. In them, an artifact is a unique thing that cannot be created, but can only be found. It usually has special properties or magic.

Inappropriate Artifacts

This term was coined to refer to finds that go beyond a certain scope. For example, they are found where they should not be, or they cause mistrust due to the lack of our knowledge of the technologies of ancient civilizations. Out-of-place artifacts include the Antikythera mechanism (discussed separately), an iron column in Delhi, giant statues on Easter Island, and many other unusual finds.

Among the artifacts there are also fakes. The famous crystal skulls, supposedly carved by an ancient civilization from a single piece of precious rock, turned out to be a skillful imitation. Studies of several of the 13 skulls found so far have shown that they were made in the 19th and 20th centuries using modern technologies.

Where can you see finds from archaeological excavations?

Ancient artifacts, which are recognized by scientists as the most valuable and interesting, end up in museums and are then put on display for visitors. The remaining items are in storage rooms or scientific institutes.

Mysterious ancient artifacts - the mystery of millennia

Sometimes archaeological finds baffle scientists. There are thousands of such examples. Writings called the Vinča alphabet were found near the city of Belgrade. They date back to 6000 BC. They have still not been able to decipher them, and scientists doubt that this will be done in the near future.

In 1901, in Greece, among the wreckage of a sunken ancient ship, an unusual object consisting of gears, scales and dials was found. It was possible to establish the date of manufacture of this mechanism - approximately 85 BC.

If we compare this ancient artifact with devices of a later time, it corresponds to the technical level of the 8th century. It is not known exactly how this mechanism (it was called Antikythera) was created more than two thousand years ago and for what purposes. The device was reconstructed by several mechanical experts. They are convinced that it served to simulate the movement of the Sun, Moon and planets.

Where to find an artifact and what to do with the find

Finding an ancient treasure is the dream of almost every person. With the advent of metal detectors, searching for antiquities has become much easier. At all times, there were groups or individuals who searched for artifacts at archaeological sites. These days they are called “black archaeologists” or “diggers.” They act for personal interests and for the purpose of enrichment. Found artifacts do not end up in museums, but in private collections. Acting unprofessionally, “black archaeologists” often destroy priceless antiquities during their searches.

It should be remembered that found artifacts of special cultural value belong to the state. To avoid possible problems with the law, it is better to take the find to a museum, where experts will give an opinion on the subject. If it has no scientific value, its value is divided between the finder and the owner of the land on whose property the artifact was discovered.

Despite the fact that the containers themselves had rusted through, their contents remained in perfect condition! Inside were French pistols, Soviet grenades, explosives disguised as pieces of coal, and a set of tools. Apparently, this cache was left for a small sabotage […]

More than half a century ago, a giant stone head was discovered deep in the jungles of Guatemala. The face turned to the sky had large eyes, thin lips and a large nose. What is unusual is that this Caucasian-type face does not correspond to any of the pre-Hispanic races of America. Opening […]

The boys ran around the surrounding hills, seemingly already studied far and wide by local residents. They were playing their childhood games, looking for rabbit holes, when suddenly they came across a hidden cave. Curiosity prompted them to climb inside, but what they saw there made the guys […]

It was as if the ancient people deliberately did everything to confuse their descendants: they would either build gigantic structures of vague purpose, or write things on stones in an incomprehensible language, or sometimes they would just die out for no apparent reason. However, in some riddles [...]

The approximate age of the find is almost half a billion years. Strangely enough, it was not their wives who were most happy about the latest catch of two fishermen from Labinsk, but local ufologists and paleontologists. The stone discovered during the “hunt” for carp and silver carp weighs no more than […]

“In 1969, near the village of Rzhavchik, Tisulsky district, during stripping work at a coal mine, a strange coffin was found in which lay a young-looking woman, as if alive. Scientists have established that its age is about 800 million years.” - […]

Among the many outstanding inventions inherited from ancient mechanics and engineers to humanity, there are also mysterious objects, the purpose of which is still controversial and doubtful. These, of course, include Roman dodecahedrons - small hollow objects made of bronze or stone, […]

Cases where objects are discovered that do not correspond to their historical time are known to researchers. The Harsfeld family, living in Louisville, USA, has kept a postcard with a view of the German city of Frankfurt since the early 1950s. According to Mrs. Rita Harsfeld, she received it from her grandfather, who […]

from lat. artefactum - artificially made) - any artificial object, cultural object; physical object; idea or image; technology; form of behavior and relationships; grade.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

ARTIFACT (from Latin - artificially made)

In the usual sense, any artificially created object; This concept came to cultural studies from archeology, where it was used to distinguish between natures. and arts. objects.

In aesthetics the term is used etymologically, i.e. directly to designate objects created specifically to function in the art system. In the interpretation of the institutional school in aesthetics, any real object can act as A. in the appropriate environment (in particular, this is what D. Dickey believes in his work “Art and Aesthetics: An Introduction to Institutional Analysis,” 1974). In this case, A. is understood as any object that is artistic. work. In modern In aesthetics, a distinction is usually made between art and art. work. A., as a rule, has a material embodiment and is a carrier of def. artist meanings. Structuralists, in addition, distinguish between A. and aesthetic. object. Here A. acts as a kind of “external symbol” (Mukarzhovsky) of an aesthetic object.

B ate. time, due to increased interest in the problem of shared ideas as cultural objects, the concept of A. began to be developed more actively. Some culturologists understand A. as any art, education, both physical and ideological, created for functioning in a specialized field. spheres of cultures and systems. A. is singled out as an elementary unit of the arts, the world, which is all the more relevant because There is still no “theory of the art object.” In this case, A. allows you to see from a single point of view. diff. cultural objects as “made” wholes (for example, installations); trace their generation, existence and destruction, their unification into certain functional and symbolic ones. patterns and forms, holistic cultural contexts, semantics. fields.

A. has three basics. its constituent elements: psychoanalytic. (establishes a connection between A. and anthropological impulse), structural (reveals the communicative-functional dominant) and hermeneutic (determines the horizons of understanding and interpretation).

A. functions in a cultural-semantic environment. fields (for example, lit-ry), which constitutes A. and determines its material carrier. A. is polysemantic and therefore represents an abstract carrier of cultural semantics, which manifests itself in different ways. contexts of use (for example, the transcultural image of Don Quixote).

To the main The modalities of the existence of architecture can be classified as: material (a form of objectification of an artificial object), functional (the sum of modifications during its use); semantic (its meanings, meanings, value in the contexts of sociocultural communication).

Lit.: Berdyaev N.A. Man and machine (Problem of sociology and metaphysics of technology) // VF. 1989. No. 2; Mumford L. The Myth of the Machine // Vestn. Moscow un-ta. Ser. 12. Socio-political, research. 1992. No. 1; New technocratic wave in the West: Sat. texts. M., 1986; Espinoza Server A. Who is a person? Philosophy anthropology // This is a man: An Anthology. M., 1995.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

At first glance, the question of what an artifact is is related to archeology and literature. Artifacts appear in historical accounts, fantasy, quests and horror films. But, in fact, the meaning of this term is much broader.

What is an artifact

The word comes from the Latin artefactum, which translates as “artificially made.” This means that only non-natural objects, phenomena, and processes can be classified as artifacts. This is everything that results from the material or spiritual activity of a person. That is, when answering the question of what an artifact is, we mean not only objects, but also an expressed thought, a social organization, a transmitted message. Each artifact has not only a material expression, but also a semantic content.

In science, culture and entertainment

If we are talking about culture, then an artifact can be called works of art, various superstitions, and man-made objects. In science, it is the result of an experiment influenced by unforeseen factors. A unique formula is what an artifact is in mathematics. In document science, this concept refers to various effects that are not related to the content of the document: spots, drawings, etc.

This term even exists in psychiatry. There, a clinical artifact refers to the inappropriate actions of patients who find themselves in an incomprehensible or new situation. In computer online role-playing games, artifacts are rare items that provide the player with strength and other advantages.

Artifacts of history

Scientists identify several groups related to the past of human civilization. Artifacts in the culture of the ancients are objects that have a symbolic meaning. Paleoartifacts or unidentified fossils are things created by someone before the rise of Homo sapiens. Based on such findings, some researchers put forward numerous hypotheses about the origin and history of our planet. From the point of view of traditional science, unidentified objects are still not artificial, but natural formations, very similar to man-made objects.

In the 20th century, writer and scientist Ivan Terence Sanderson coined the word out-of-place artifact, which means “out of place artifact.” This is the name given to items and objects found in unusual places and forcing scientists to puzzle over their origin and purpose.

Where did the parallelepiped come from?

At the end of the 19th century in Austria, miners found a strange metal object of regular shape in a piece of coal, which they named after the place of discovery. A pair of opposite sides of it were rounded, and the other four sides were marked with a deep cut. Ufologists tend to consider this find a gift from extraterrestrial civilizations. Traditional science declares it to be an element of an ancient mining winch.

Mysterious Spheres

In Africa, unusual balls with regular grooves surrounding the circumference were discovered. They were dubbed Klerksdorp balls. At first glance, they are made of metal by the hand of an intelligent creature. But scientists have found that the mysterious artifacts of the past consist of the mineral hematite and are of natural origin.

Mysterious footprints

In American sandstone, geologists have discovered well-preserved traces of human sandals that could have been left 250 million years ago, while modern science claims that the age of humanity is no more than 5 million years. Scientists reject the fact that these are prints left by humans. They claim that it is simply a similar “pattern” on natural geological rocks.

Impeccable designs

They could own technologies, the age of which is determined by scientists to be much later. An example of this is a mechanism recovered from the depths of an ancient sunken ship near the Greek island of Antikythera. The object is an astronomical gear calendar created around the hundredth year BC. e. Scientists were amazed by the perfection because similar inventions of a later period (6th century AD) were still known, which were made much more primitive than the found calendar. This fact suggests, in particular, that modern science does not always rightfully evaluate the intelligence and technical capabilities of our ancestors.

How to find them

People who are passionate about searching for mysterious objects can find them anywhere. The research of geologists also serves as fertile places for this. Traveling to places where no one has gone before (or very rarely) may also be the answer to the question of where to find an artifact. Well, we can advise those looking for magical objects in a computer game to communicate with their many “colleagues.” There are always advanced users who have found dozens of lifesavers.