Artefactes

Artefactes are objects made or modified by humans that bear significance for understanding past or present societies. The word derives from Latin artefactum and appears in forms such as artefact and artifact in various languages, with artefactes being a plural form in languages like Catalan or Portuguese-influenced usage.

In archaeology and anthropology, artefactes are typically portable items—stone implements, pottery sherds, metal tools, jewelry, inscriptions—that researchers interpret to reconstruct technologies, economies, social structures, and daily life. They are distinguished from ecofacts, which are natural materials that have cultural relevance but were not manufactured by humans. Artefactes are often dated by typology, stratigraphy, or absolute methods such as radiocarbon dating, and their context within a site informs interpretation.

In museums and heritage practice, artefactes are collected, conserved, and exhibited to communicate history. Provenance, conservation state, and documentation shape how artefactes are stored and interpreted. Ethical considerations include repatriation and community involvement.

In modern technology, artefactes also denote unintended byproducts of processes, such as digital artifacts in images or audio caused by compression, sampling, or transmission; visual artifacts in rendered graphics; or sensor and processing artifacts in scientific data. The term thus spans both material culture and software or data contexts, reflecting human creation, modification, or the byproducts of observation and recording.