Dictionary Definition

artifact n : a man-made object taken as a whole [syn: artefact] [ant: natural object]

User Contributed Dictionary

Latin ars, artis art, factum something made (or arte facto, made by art)

An object made by human hand or shaped by it.
An object, such as a tool, weapon or ornament, of archaeological or historical interest, esp. such an object found at an archaeological excavation.
- The dig produced many Roman artifacts.
Something viewed as a product of human conception or agency rather than an inherent element.
- "The very act of looking at a naked model was an artifact of male supremacy" (Philip Weiss).
Ref: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 8 March 2007.
A structure or finding in an experiment or investigation that is not a true feature of the object under observation, but is a result of external action, the test arrangement, or an experimental error.
- The spot on his lung turned out to be an artifact of the X-ray process.

man-made object

archaeological object

something viewed as a product of human conception

artificial feature

translations to be checked

Artifact or artefact may refer to:

Artifact (archaeology), any object made or modified by a human culture, and later recovered by an archaeological endeavor
Artefact (band) black metal band from France
Artifact (band), a band from Norway
Artifact (error), an error or misrepresentation introduced by a technique and/or technology
Artifact (fantasy), in the fantasy genre, is usually a magical object so powerful that it cannot be duplicated or destroyed by ordinary means
Artifact (medical imaging), misrepresentations of tissue structures seen in medical images
Artifact (observational), any perceived distortion or other data error caused by the instrument of observation
Artifact (software development), one of many kinds of tangible byproduct produced during the development of software
The Artifact (Eureka), a fictional object appearing in the TV series Eureka
Compression artifact, data compression artifact in computer science, resulting from lossy data compression
Cultural artifact, a human-made object which gives information about the culture of its creator and users
Digital artifact, a visible defect in a digital photo or video picture
Iatrogenic artifact, a disease made up by doctors
Social artifact, a product of individuals or groups (social beings) or of their social behavior
Sonic artifact, in sound and music production, sonic material that is accidental or unwanted, resulting from the editing of another sound
Virtual artifact, objects in the digital environment