That is a terribly limiting point of view Wade. A culture is much more
than the sum of it's material remains. To limit your definition of
culture to a set of physical objects is both incorrect and presumptuous.
Perhaps you should consider this....
What IS the artifact beyond the meaning it's creators, possessors, and
users attach to it? Is it formed from nothing like Hamlet written by
infinite typing monkeys? Formed by chance? A few perhaps, but not the
vast majority. They are created around ideas...
Material culture is both dependant upon and spawned by Intellectual
culture.
In our own species, the latter led to the former, but there is no reason
why this is should necessarily be the case for ALL species. Many human
tools result from our biological insuitability to our habitat. For a
species better adapted, such tools might not be required.
You make a fundamental mistake in assuming that an artifact (which I
define as a material object, although there are those who consider
language and other intellectual creations "artifacts" as well for lack
of a better term) is the ONLY product or expression of "culture". That
is simply not factual.
--Autumn