Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes that objects with the status of artifacts—objects that are a hybrid between human and non-human—have been a component of the evolutionary context of humanity for over two million years. It explores to establish the centrality of artifacts, not only as a source of evidence about early humans, but rather as a critical component of the process of becoming human. Status functions play the role of imposing "functions on objects and people where the objects and the people cannot perform the functions solely in virtue of their physical structure". The movement of the human body from living personhood to the inert corpse has challenged people for millennia, and the reaction is often to create an artifact out of the physical remains of the diseased.