Antique should be a clue to the meaning of this word, which refers to things that are extremely old or ancient. This isn’t grandparent old — this is really old, like hundreds or even thousands of years old. People also use this word to compare old ways of doing things to new ways: you could say an old-fashioned idea is an antiquity that goes against modernity (newer ideas and ways of doing things). Antiquity can also mean the time before the Middle Ages.

Antiquities are objects from Antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Mesolithic, and other civilizations from Asia and elsewhere may also be covered by the term. The phenomenon of giving a high value to ancient artifacts is found in other cultures, notably China, where Chinese ritual bronzes, three to two thousand years old, have been avidly collected and imitated for centuries, and the Pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, where in particular the artifacts of the earliest Olmec civilization are found reburied in significant sites of later cultures up to the Spanish Conquest.

Antiquities. something belonging to or remaining from ancient times, as monuments, relics, or customs. the quality of being ancient; former ages, the period of history before the Middle Ages, the peoples, nations, tribes, or cultures of ancient times.

The definition of the term is not always precise, and institutional definitions such as museum “Departments of Antiquities” often cover later periods, but in normal usage Gothic objects, for example, would not now be described as antiquities, though in 1700 they might well have been, as the cut-off date for antiquities has tended to retreat since the word was first found in English in 1513. Non-artistic artifacts are now less likely to be called antiquities than in earlier periods. Francis Bacon wrote in 1605: “Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time”.

The art trade reflects modern usage of the term; Christie’s “Department of Antiquities” covers objects “from the dawn of civilization to the Dark Ages, ranging from Western Europe to the Caspian Sea, embracing the cultures of Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Near East.” Bonhams use a similar definition: “…4000 B.C to the 12th Century A.D. Geographically they originate from Egypt, the Near East and Europe …” Official cut-off dates are often later, being unconcerned with precise divisions of art history, and using the term for all historical periods they wish to protect: in Jordan it is 1750, in Hong Kong 1800, and so on.

The term is no longer much used in formal academic discussion, because of this imprecision. Most, but not all, antiquities have been recovered by archaeology. There is little or no overlap with antiques, which covers objects, not generally discovered as a result of archaeology, at most about three hundred years old, and usually far less.

Ancient art refers to the many types of art produced by the advanced cultures of ancient societies with some form of writing, such as those of ancient China, India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The art of pre-literate societies is normally referred to as Prehistoric art and is not covered here. Although some Pre-Columbian cultures developed writing during the centuries before the arrival of Europeans, on grounds of dating these are covered at Pre-Columbian art, and articles such as Maya art and Aztec art.

The sense of antiquitates, the idea that a civilization could be recovered by a systematic exploration of its relics and material culture, in the sense used by Varro and reflected in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews was lost during the Middle Ages, when ancient objects were collected with other appeals, the rarity or strangeness of their materials or simply because they were thought to be endowed with magical or miraculous powers. Precious cameos and other antique carved gems might be preserved when incorporated into crowns and diadems and liturgical objects, consular ivory diptychs by being used as gospel covers. Roman columns could be re-erected in churches. sarcophagi could receive new occupants and cinerary urns could function as holy water stoups. Sculptural representations of the human form, feared and reviled as “idols” could be rehabilitated by reidentifying their subjects: the equestrian bronze Marcus Aurelius of the Campidoglio was respected as a representation of the Christian emperor Constantine, and in Pavia the Regisole acquired a civic role that preserved it. In Rome the Roman bronze Spinario was admired for itself by the guidebook writer Magister Gregorius. The classicism of the Carolingian renaissance was in part inspired by appreciation of Late Antique manuscripts: the Utrecht Psalter attempts to recreate such a Late Antique original, both in its handwriting and its illustrations.