Materiality turn: Community artifacts as indispensable media for communicating societal culture

Globally, cultural heritage is often expressed through artifacts that embody the historical antiquities, traditions, and collective identity of the society. Artifacts are understood as carriers of community memory, social relations, and identity, rather than passive objects. Therefore, Artifacts function as non-verbal multimodal media of intergenerational transmission, helping societies to communicate cultural knowledge and collective memories across historical periods. Human artifacts are, thus, powerful conveyors of human activities over time. Moreover, Artifacts offer a tangible testimony of how people have interacted with their environments. From time immemorial, anthropologists have attempted to decode the materials and craftsmanship to uncover the symbolic meanings embedded in these crafts. This paper explores how community artifacts communicate community culture from an anthropological lens. These objects, ranging from tools, weapons, clothing, and art to monuments and pottery, signify the political, social, economic, and spiritual dimensions of human civilizations. The theories that underpin anthropological value and communicative role of artifacts include the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT Framework), Property Transmission, and the Embodied Cognition Theory. Artifacts as Media for Cultural Communication help preserve the societal patrimony. The museums, heritage collection institutions, and archives, therefore, need to take up the role of conserving artifacts. This will ensure cultural continuity for future generations. Moreover, preserving artifacts promotes intercultural dialogue by communicating both the uniqueness and connectedness of cultures worldwide.