5 ms·
Not quite. Provenance is the story of how an object came from the ground to wherever it is now. The question of authentication is larger than provenance. If the
by wl 4y ago
Not quite. Provenance is the story of how an object came from the ground to wherever it is now. The question of authentication is larger than provenance. If there's good documentation showing the object originally came from an archeological excavation, that's a point towards authenticity. If the alleged provenance starts with an unnamed antiquities dealer by way of an anonymous Swiss collector, that doesn't help one way or another with the authenticity question.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoYou're strictly correct, but I made some simplifications that I think are appropriate and avoid the whole semantic mess of what "authenticity" means. Secure provenance is usually a sufficient condition to establish authenticity for archaeologists anyway.
- wl 4y agoThe problem with that oversimplification is that provenance is much bigger than authentication and authentication is much bigger than provenance. Sure, some of the work overlaps, but they're distinct. When provenance research shows up in the media, it's usually in the form of identifying looted material culture and repatriating it. There's also the issue of objects that are almost certainly authentic and legally exported, but the provenance doesn't go back to the archeological context ("provenience" [sic]) and that lack of provenance limits the archeological value of these objects.
- moloch-hai 4y agoOversimplification is its own sort of forgery.