Provenance is the documented history of an object’s origin, custody and changes. Its coverage depends on which events the surviving records actually establish.

Different records answer different questions

A factory record can identify manufacture or an original configuration. An acquisition record can identify a transfer into a collection. A later examination can describe the object’s present condition. None automatically supplies every missing event between those points.

Cody’s firearms records service draws on original factory records for manufacture and configuration information. The kind of record determines the kind of conclusion: factory data need not identify every later owner or alteration.

Identifying a model is different from documenting its chain of custody. Legal classification is another question again. The RCMP describes the Firearms Reference Table as an administrative identification and classification document, not a legal instrument.

An identification entry therefore cannot by itself establish a particular object’s ownership history or resolve every legal question about it.

Changes after the original use

A film prop can survive in a condition different from its screen appearance. The Royal Armouries DH-17 does not match a screen-used configuration and underwent later restoration. Its present appearance belongs to the object’s history but cannot stand in for every earlier state.

Paperback records pose the same structural problem at the edition level. A title identifies a work; the copy’s publisher, date and physical features identify a particular publication object.

Documented intervals

Take an object with a factory record and a museum acquisition record separated by forty years. Those records establish two events. They do not establish an uninterrupted account of the intervening custody.

The scope of a provenance claim ends where its records end. A credible description preserves the documented connections while distinguishing an unknown interval from a continuous history.