Etymology

Noun

1. Place or source of origin.
2. The place and time of origin of some artifact or other object. See Usage note below.
3. The history of ownership of a work of art
4. the copy history of a piece of data, or the intermediate pieces of data utilized to compute a final data element, as in a database record or web site (data provenance)
5. The execution history of computer processes which were utilized to compute a final piece of data (process provenance)
6. (of a person) Background; history; place of origin; ancestry.

Usage notes

• The term provenience in archaeology/archeology has largely replaced provenance because provenience is restricted to in situ location at the date of archaeological discovery rather than the "origin-to-present" chain of custody details of proper provenance as is customarily used by historians, museums, and commercial entities.