Provenance Provenance is a term used to describe the chronology of ownership, chain of custody or location of a historic object. It provides vital information that can inform the value of an object, and, more importantly, it also provides a historical record and timeline that can help to reveal the story of an object. Depending on how much of the chronology of ownership survives, we can piece together how and when historical timekeepers initially passed from the care of their makers into the hands of their first owners, then another owner, and yet more subsequent owners and caretakers up to the present day. Sometimes, there are gaps in the provenance of an object. This means that the whereabouts of the object are unknown for a given period of time.
