Do the worlds of archaeology and collecting use the same terms but mean different things?
Take the word "provenience" or "provenance".
Archaeologists will use the term to indicate the context: "the provenience was in inhumation burial 32 in the Macri Langoni cemetery at Kameiros, Rhodes".
Art historians (and with it the writers of auction catalogues) use it to describe pedigree: "the provenience is the famous late Victorian collection of the Revd William MacGregor".
Christopher Chippindale and I have attempted to address this question. We suggest the adoption of two separate categories:
a. The archaeology. Where was it found? Is the context known? Is the find-spot merely "reported"? Is it reliable? Or is the archaeological context lost?
b. The history. Is the object known from the moment it was excavated? When was it first recorded? Through whose hands did it pass? Does it appear here for the first time?
Do we need to abandon the language of "provenience"? Should we adopt a more transparent form of presentation?
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Terminology: is provenience a redundant term?
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2 comments:
I don't think that provenience is redundant at all although incorrect usage has blurred its meaning.
Provenience actually refers to the situation and 3D position in which an artefact was found, the usage you describe as being used by archaeologists.
The word which should be used to describe what has happened to the object since its discovery is Provenance.
See Kris Hurst's Archaeology blog
(http://archaeology.about.com/b/2006/05/16/provenience-provenance-lets-call-the-whole-thing-off.htm)
for a discussion.
Provenience: The precise location where an artifact or archaeological sample was
recovered archaeologically.
Provenance: The detailed history of where an artifact has been since its creation.
I think being able to distinguish between these two meanings is extremely useful.
FWIW, I've argued that provenience refers to the archaeological associations of an object, that is, its context in antiquity. Provenance refers to a chain of custody, that is, its context as an antiquity. One of the complexities in debates about cultural property is that different legal and ethical constructs privilege one or the other concept, so that provenance-centric views assume that legal custody and boundaries of nation-states should determine ownership, while provenience-centric views assume that ownership should reflect ethnicity and cultural affiliation.
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