
Context is what allows archaeologists to understand the relationships between artifacts and between archaeological sites. At that point, the artifact has little or no scientific value. When people remove an artifact without recording its precise location, we lose that context forever. It is the context or association between the bison skeleton and the artifact that proved this. The spear point established once and for all that people had inhabited North America since the late Pleistocene. It settled an argument that had gone on for decades. In the 1920s, archaeologists found a stone spear point lodged between the ribs of a species of a North American bison that went extinct at the end of the last Ice Age. Archaeologists record the exact spot where they find an artifact before removing it from that location. Every artifact found on an archaeological site has a defined location. derivedFrom, revisionOf, informedBy, providesEvidenceFor, etc.Context in archaeology refers to the relationship that artifacts have to each other and to their surroundings. But implementations MAY define specializations of this attribute with more specific meaning - e.g.

Using the Artifact Type Value Set ( artifactType) A catalog record describing the ice specimen.An ice specimen collected from an arctic glacier.A prehistoric tool fragment specimen collected and cataloged form an archaeological site.A dinosaur fossil collected and cataloged from a research site.An individual record from CIViC about the BRAF V600E mutation.The CIViC knowledgebase containing curated information about cancer mutations.

A catalog entry for a centrifuge instrument.A poster and abstract submission about the Architecting Attribution project.

The date on which the artifact was last updated or modified.Ī URL where information about the Artifact can be found.Ī particular contribution made by an agent to the artifact.Ī separate artifact that directly or indirectly influenced creation of the artifact of interest. The date on which the current version or form of the artifact was completed. The high-level class to which the artifact belongs (always set to ‘Artifact’).Īdditional identifier(s) for the artifact that come from an external system or authority.
Because the characteristics of Artifacts will vary dramatically across research activities and domains, the CAM model of Artifacts specifies only generic metadata attributes, and leaves domain-specific characteristics to implementations to define as formal extensions of the base Artifact class.Ī unique string that identifies the artifact.a dinosaur fossil, an arctic ice core sample, prehistoric human tool fragments). This may include natural specimens and man-made archaeological artifacts that are collected, modified, or cataloged for research purposes (e.g. We are primarily concerned with material or informational artifacts used in generated by research-related activities.Artifacts are the products of agent-driven activities, and represent things to which Contributions are made.Definition: A physical or digital entity that is created, collected, modified, or cataloged by an agent.
