artifactswithout

Note: artifactswithout is a fictional concept used here to illustrate how a digital archive might organize information about artifacts that are missing, erased, or otherwise absent from physical or digital records.

artifactswithout envisions an online archive that collects entries describing artifacts whose existence is argued but not verifiable, or whose traces have been lost. The project centers on questions of provenance, absence, and memory, and frames absence as a subject of study rather than a mere gap. Each entry would typically describe a hypothesized artifact, its supposed context, potential materials or technologies, and the scholarly sources or theories that discuss it.

Organization and practices in artifactswithout emphasize openness and collaboration. Entries would include metadata fields such as title, date range, possible provenance, material assumptions, context, and links to related artifacts or theories. The archive would rely on versioned records, transparent edit histories, and open licenses to encourage remix and critical discussion. Provenance and citation would be prioritized to prevent speculative claims from becoming mistaken records.

Applications in the fictional project include use in digital humanities, museology, and memory studies to explore how knowledge is constructed around absence. It offers a lens for examining preservation ethics, archival gaps, and the politics of what societies choose to preserve or forget. While purely hypothetical, artifactswithout is intended to provoke considerations about metadata, trust, and the criteria used to define a “artifact.”

See also: digital preservation, memory studies, data archaeology, museology, archival ethics.