Provenance Provenance is the term used to describe the chronology of ownership or location of a historic object. It provides crucial information that can determine the value of an object, and more importantly, it also provides a historical record and timeline that can help to reveal its story. Depending on how much is known of the chain of custody, we can piece together when and how a historical timekeeper passed from the care of its maker into the hands of its first owner, 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.
