Provenience and Provenance

Abstract

An essential term in archaeology is provenience. Provenience has two meanings: the place of discovery and the place of origin. The provenience of an artifact can be the place where it was found in excavations – that is a very important piece of information. Artifacts and other archaeological objects with an unknown provenience provide very little information for learning about the past. Provenience of discovery implies context, meaning that there is additional information available about the object of interest. Provenience also means the place of origin, or source, the place from where an artifact, object, or person came; the term might refer to the place of manufacture. Thus, one should be clear about the precise usage.