Provenance Provenance Provenance (from the French "provenir", 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, paleontology, archives, manuscripts, printed books and science and computing. The primary purpose of tracing the provenance of an object or entity is normally to provide contextual and circumstantial evidence for its original production or discovery, by establishing, as far as practicable, its later history, especially the sequences of its formal ownership,
To be, or not to be to make a point about "extremism in defense of liberty." P.D. James' dystopian novel "The Children of Men" (1992) refers to expected or forced mass suicides of the elderly as "Quietus". The film adaptation "Children of Men" (2006) portrays a self-administered home suicide kit, labelled "Quietus". "Star Trek"'s was named after the "Undiscovered Country" line from this soliloquy. References are made to Shakespeare during the film including Klingon translations of his works and the use of the phrase "taH pagh, taHbe' ", roughly meaning "whether to continue, or not to continue [existence]." The book (and later film) "What Dreams May