Canadian Politics Today

Reading the article 'artifacts' is the most confusing:

'The last element of culture is the artifacts, or material objects, that constitute a society’s material culture.'

Then they say that the wheel and cellphones are artifacts, so I would instead call that technological landscape or media topology.

Thinking of artifacts, one tends to think of stuff like arrow heads or rune stones or Stonehenge or other things.  Technology might fit part of the story but not all of it.  Arrow heads were, in part, the hunting technology of the people that made them, but they were also a part of a lifestyle that was central to the culture.  Hunting was not just an activity, it was the driving force behind everything. Stonehenge might have been a calendar technology of a sort, but it was more. It had spiritual importance that went beyond just marking the solstices and equinoxes.   Rune stones and tablets with hieroglyphics may have been media, but they were used to record stories and information that was considered too significant to trust to parchment and charcoal. Carven stone was supposed to last forever.

I'm not sure just any wheel would be an artifact, but the automobile may be one of our society's iconic artifacts of the era from the end of WWII right through to now.  Perhaps the cell phone is becoming the new iconic artifact.

 -k