assemblage

[uh-sem-blij, a-sahn-blazh]

noun

1. a group of persons or things gathered or collected; an assembly; collection; aggregate.

2. the act of assembling; state of being assembled.

3. Fine Arts.

   1. a sculptural technique of organizing or composing into a unified whole a group of unrelated and often fragmentary or discarded objects.

   2. a work of art produced by this technique.

4. Archaeology.,  the aggregate of artifacts and other remains found on a site, considered as material evidence in support of a theory concerning the culture or cultures inhabiting it.

assemblage

/ əˈsɛmblɪdʒ /

noun

1. a number of things or persons assembled together; collection; assembly

2. a list of dishes served at a meal or the dishes themselves

3. the act or process of assembling or the state of being assembled

4. a three-dimensional work of art that combines various objects into an integrated whole

assemblage

1. A collection of artifacts from a single datable component of an archaeological site. Depending on the site and culture, an assemblage may be associated with a single limited activity, as with stone tools found at a butchering site, or may reflect a broad range of cultural life, as with artifacts that are found in a communal living site.

Other Word Forms

• reassemblage noun
• subassemblage noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of assemblage¹

From French, dating back to 1695–1705; assemble, -age

Example Sentences

The twenty-eight tons of ancient coins that were a part of the Shinan ship’s cargo were the largest and undoubtedly most monetarily valuable assemblage of coins ever recovered from a sunken vessel.

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The vast assemblages of highly paid people inside them were worth, in her view, nothing.

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The book includes a vast assemblage of band member recollections as collected by Academy Award-winning director Morgan Neville.

Read more on Salon

His postmortem portraits, nearly 30 of which are reproduced in “The Harlem Book of the Dead,” are artistic assemblages that honor the dead and the community’s funerary traditions.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

“The leaders of the American resistance were not utopian visionaries but, rather, an assemblage of pragmatic statesmen accustomed to negotiating the space between ideals and realities,” Mr. Ellis writes.

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