Artifacts are objects that were intentionally designed and shaped through human efforts. Manufacturing waste such as a flake scatter or mining tailings, although not created deliberately, convey information too. Artifacts, and the context in which they are found, help archaeologists describe and compare aspects of past cultures, as well as help to form a chronology of those cultures.
Most artifacts are not treasures, in the popular sense. The information or value comes primarily from an artifact's context, or where it is found and its relationship to what other items are recovered. To record context, the archaeologist takes care to document the artifact's exact horizontal relationship to other artifacts and features and its stratigraphic position. Each step of the excavation is recorded with detailed maps and photographs of the site.
Context then, is a big deal in archaeology and it's unfortunate to see a single "choice" object taken from a site and reduced to a mere curio because it has no context or story. Indigenous people see disturbing a native archaeological site as a transgression. Shelly Covert, spokesperson for the Nevada City Nisenan, says that looting is “separating the artifact from the land.” Artist Judith Lowry, also of Nevada City, is of Pit River and Mountain Maidu ancestry and she says that taking artifacts away is “disturbing the story.” In addition to being ethically shaky, "collecting", as looting is sometimes called, is against the law on lands managed by the federal government.
Of course there are isolated finds with no accompanying context. It's not uncommon to find a single projectile point that might have come from a wounded animal that got away from the hunter but eventually died where the point was found – but this is pure conjecture. While hiking I came across an empty iron flask that once held 75 pounds of quicksilver (mercury) on a steep slope in a remote part of the South Yuba Canyon – who knows what the story behind this find is?
An artifact apart from its ability to provide information about the past, has a presence on its own. Now this is not science, but a shaped hand-stone, milling stone or "mano" can have a pleasing heft, an aesthetic sculptural dimension, a sensual wear pattern and a cleverness of design in its specialized surfaces created for different purposes. Some humble tools found at sawmill or mining sites are improved as aesthetic objects by rust and corrosion (remember Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps album?).
With artifacts, especially those out of context, there is always an ambiguity factor. I think I can detect a change in the perception of the beholder when I refer to an artifact as “art” versus “a tool.” I'm also a photographer who delights in the ambiguity of the medium – I love to photograph artifacts without scientific "objectivity" and to flirt with invented context. There is a playfulness that comes with responding to the pure object without archaeological baggage.
So here's a small portfolio of artifactual photographs, out of context. All the artifacts were found in the Yuba River basin.
A pestle with a beautifully beveled milling surface
Milling stone with a curved milling surface and a flat,battered end
Candle holder, the lid of a sardine tin and an amalgam scoop
A milling stone deliberately shaped to include a diagonal stripe
Chinese opium tin, flattened
Box of basalt projectile points
A mysterious slab of shaped granite with an eye bolt
An appropriate accessory for the Blacksmith's Ball
Either a knife or spear point of silky fine-grained basalt
Manly tools
