---
title: "Provenance"
chunk: 4/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provenance"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:44:58.110534+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Archaeology and anthropology researchers use the word provenience (or alternatively find-spot) to refer to the exact location of discovery of an artifact, a bone or other remains, a soil sample, or a feature within an ancient site, whereas the word provenance covers an object's complete documented history. Ideally, in modern excavations, the provenience is recorded in three dimensions on a site grid with great precision, and may also be recorded on video to provide additional proof and context. In older work, often undertaken by amateurs, only the general site or approximate area may be known, especially when an artifact was found outside a professional excavation and its specific position not recorded. The term provenience appeared in the 1880s, about a century after provenance. Outside of academic contexts, it has been used as a synonymous variant spelling of provenance, especially in American English.
Digital analytical methods have also been applied to the reconstruction of archaeological provenience. For example, a 2025 study used high-resolution three-dimensional surface comparison to identify ancient Egyptian artefacts produced from the same mould, contributing to the reassessment of their original context.
Any given antiquity may have both a provenience, where it was found, and a provenance, where it has been since it was found. A summary of the distinction is that "provenience is a fixed point, while provenance can be considered an itinerary that an object follows as it moves from hand to hand." Another metaphor is that provenience is an artifact's "birthplace", while provenance is its "résumé". This can be imprecise. Many artifacts originated as trade goods created in one region, but were used and finally deposited in another.
Aside from scientific precision, a need for the distinction in these fields has been described thus:

Archaeologists ... don't care who owned an object—they are more interested in the context of an object within the community of its (mostly original) users. ... [W]e are interested in why a Roman coin turned up in a shipwreck 400 years after it was made; while art historians don't really care, since they can generally figure out what mint a coin came from by the information stamped on its surface. "It's a Roman coin, what else do we need to know?" says an art historian; "The shipping trade in the Mediterranean region during late Roman times" says an archaeologist. ... [P]rovenance for an art historian is important to establish ownership, but provenience is interesting to an archaeologist to establish meaning.
In this context, the provenance can occasionally be the detailed history of where an object has been since its creation, as in art history contexts – not just since its modern finding. In some cases, such as where there is an inscription on the object, or an account of it in written materials from the same era, an object of study in archaeology or cultural anthropology may have an early provenance – a known history that predates modern research – then a provenience from its modern finding, and finally a continued provenance relating to its handling and storage or display after the modern acquisition.
Evidence of provenance in the more general sense can be of importance in archaeology. Fakes are not unknown, and finds are sometimes removed from the context in which they were found without documentation, reducing their value to science. Even when apparently discovered in situ, archaeological finds are treated with caution. The provenience of a find may not be properly represented by the context in which it was found, e.g. due to stratigraphic layers being disturbed by erosion, earthquakes, or ancient reconstruction or other disturbance at a site.
Artifacts can be moved through looting as well as trade, far from their place of origin and long before modern rediscovery. Many source nations have passed legislation forbidding the domestic trade in cultural heritage. Further research is often required to establish the true provenance and legal status of a find, and what the relationship is between the exact provenience and the overall provenance.
In paleontology and paleoanthropology, it is recognized that fossils can also move from their primary context and are sometimes found, apparently in-situ, in deposits to which they do not belong because they have been moved, for example, by the erosion of nearby but different outcrops. It is unclear how strictly paleontology maintains the provenience and provenance distinction. For example, a short glossary at a website, primarily aimed at young students, of the American Museum of Natural History treats the terms as synonymous, while scholarly paleontology works make frequent use of provenience in the same precise sense as used in archaeology and paleoanthropology.
While exacting details of a find's provenience are primarily of use to scientific researchers, most natural history and archaeology museums also make strenuous efforts to record how the items in their collections were acquired. These records are often of use in helping to establish a chain of provenance.

=== Data provenance ===

Scientific research is generally held to be of good provenance when it is documented in detail sufficient to allow reproducibility. Scientific workflow systems assist scientists and programmers with tracking their data through all transformations, analyses, and interpretations. Data sets are reliable when the processes used to create them are reproducible and analyzable for defects. Security researchers are interested in data provenance because it can analyze suspicious data and make large opaque systems transparent.
Current initiatives to effectively manage, share, and reuse ecological data are indicative of the increasing importance of data provenance. Examples of these initiatives are National Science Foundation Datanet projects, DataONE and Data Conservancy, as well as the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Some international academic consortia, such as the Research Data Alliance, have specific groups to tackle issues of provenance. In that case it is the Research Data Provenance Interest Group.