LEX-43 / Disciplinary term
Provenance
Information about where something came from and how it was made or changed.
01 / Origins
Where it comes from
W3C describes provenance through relationships among things, activities and responsible agents.
02 / Translation
How we use it
Keep source, adaptation and decision records together so a reader can follow the work back.
03 / What this does not establish
A complete-looking record is not independent proof that every claim is true.
Try the idea
Keep the route back visible.
A copper-inspired interface
A green accent on warm paper.
- Reference
- Getty’s account of bronze surface conservation.
- Our choice
- Carry a copper/green colour relationship into a digital study.
- Our departure
- No claim to reproduce a sculpture, its history or its chemical state.
- Credit
- Reference institution and source link stay with the study.
An illustrative decision record. Attribution identifies a contribution; provenance records relationships. Neither substitutes for permission or proves a claim true.
The route back
Sources & further reading
Sources support the context described here. The archive's design translations remain interpretations.
- World Wide Web Consortium. (2013). PROV-overview: An overview of the PROV family of documents. https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-overview/
Describes provenance relationships and their use in assessing how something was produced.
Cite this entry / revised 2026-11-05
The Chromologium. (2026). Provenance. The architectural lexicon. https://chromologium.com/lexicon/provenance