technofossil
n. An ancient artefact; (plural) The remains or traces of ancient human-made materials preserved in the earth's crust.
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Etymology
Examples
2016
In fact, rapid development of technology, swelling population and growing consumption of resources from crops to metals have expanded humanity's impacts, particularly after 1950 or so, an inflection point some have dubbed the "Great Acceleration." People have created long-lasting new materials, ranging from copper alloys to plastics that will form long-lived, so-called "technofossils."
—David Biello, “Humans Leave a Telltale Residue on Earth,” Scientific American, January 07, 2016
2015
Later we studied a transect from University to the City Centre, stopping frequently en-route to examine synthetic artefacts (termed 'technofossils'), ranging from aluminium cans to vehicles, to gain an appreciation of preservation potential and how each is an example of the Anthropocene concept.
—Jonathan Hall, “Urban Geology — a mixture of technofossils and landscape psychology,” University of Leicester, October 06, 2015
2014
As humans have colonised and modified the Earth’s surface, they have developed progressively more sophisticated tools and technologies. These underpin a new kind of stratigraphy, that we term technostratigraphy, marked by the geologically accelerated evolution and diversification of technofossils — the preservable material remains of the technosphere.
—Jan Zalasiewicz, et al., “The technofossil record of humans,” The Anthropocene Review, April 11, 2014
2003 (earliest)
Imagine that the artist Georges Adeagbo created an installation that uses the artwork of Parliament-Funkadelic albums from 1974-1980 to build a new myth cycle of politico-socio-racio-sexual fantasies from the cultural memory of this era. Imagine that the archaeologists from the future are now discovering fragments from that work, techno-fossils from tomorrow’s yesterdays.
—Kodwo Eshun, “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism,” The New Centennial Review, Volume 3, Number 2, June 01, 2003
Notes
Here's a much older usage (from 1984), but it's hard to say from what little context Google provides whether the author is referring to technofossils as I've defined them here.
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