Artifacts

An artifact is an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.

Museums are full of artifacts. Archeologist work diligently at finding and recording and displaying artifacts. A 500-year-old spoon or indigenous pottery or some ancient weapon or a scrap of clothing hold a fascination for us to review.

Our history is based on artifacts. It is evidence we existed before recordings. Merely everyday items discarded and left to historians to designated importance.

Ever explore an abandoned building? Places where people used to live and for whatever reason left, leaving behind memories no one else knew. Some have treasures like pianos too big to move or trinkets that were important at some point. Some appear crime scenes while others just a statement of human migration.

Antique shops are cluttered with items abandoned and given a price of wealth to add to your home collection. Displaying someone else’s hand-me-downs as family heirlooms is a habit to impress others. Tales of ancestry with an object to fill the story is always worthy of a conversation.

When items don’t sell at the antique market, they wander to the junk yard. This isn’t the trash heap for some of the items still have value for parts and pieces. These discarded pieces of history rust in the rain and sun, leaking their toxic liquids into the soil and ground water as the weeds give them shelter.

When you stop at the next yard sale, consider the items on display as the next generation’s artifacts. Bell bottoms and platform shoes or 8-track tapes and rabbit ear antennas will become a wonder to our grandchildren.