Glossary Collecting and the antiquities trade
Find-spot
Also called: findspot
The place where an object was found, recorded at anything from village level to an exact position in a tomb or trench.
A find-spot can be precise, such as a numbered tomb in an excavated cemetery, or vague, such as a village name written on an old label by a dealer or collector. Old find-spots need checking: nineteenth-century diggers and dealers sometimes attached the name of a well-known site to material from elsewhere, and a label may simply record the place where the object was bought.
Most Cypriot objects in older collections have no recorded find-spot, and museum catalogues say so. The catalogue of the Zintilis collection records find-spots 'wherever possible' while stating that none of its objects came from a scientific excavation (Collecting Cypriot Antiquities Today). A known find-spot without an excavated context places an object on the map but says little about how it was used.
Related terms
- Provenience
The precise find-spot of an excavated object, recorded by site, layer and position; in this usage kept distinct from provenance, its ownership history.
- Unprovenanced
Describes an object whose find-spot is unknown, and often whose earlier ownership history is undocumented as well.
- Archaeological context
The exact place and circumstances in which an object was found, including its layer and associated finds, which give it most of its value as evidence.
Where it appears
- Repatriations, 2023 to 2026: The Returns of Cypriot Antiquities and Church Art Read as a Body of Cases
- Gold, Silver, Tin, Arsenic and Iron in Ancient Cyprus
- Stone Plank Figures
- The Island Collections: Private Collections Formed on Cyprus and What Became of Them
- Vounous and Early Bronze Age Burial
- Buying Back: Recovering Cypriot Antiquities and Church Art by Purchase Instead of in Court
- Coins and Metal-Detected Finds: The Small-Find Trade in Cypriot Antiquities
- How Cypriot Figurines Are Classified
- Lions, Sphinxes and Griffins
- The Symes Returns of 2025: Cypriot Antiquities from a London Dealer's Stock
- Antiquities from the Sea: Amphorae, Wrecks and Divers off Cyprus
- Bichrome Red Ware
and 78 more compendium pages