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An instance of locative status is the collective ascription to an entity of a formal association to a geographic place. The substance of the locative status is the communal attribution of a defined association type between the desginated entity and place. As opposed to connections created between entities and places through their passage through space and time, e.g.: the place of birth being a property of the birth event of an individual, locative statuses are created de jure rather than de facto, and create a socially recognized connection between an entity and a location regardless the real or known spatiotemporal history of that object. For example, documentation may point to ambiguous evidence linking an object and a place such as the 'origin' of a person or the 'provenance' location of a physical object. In these cases, when we do not know the actual physical history of the object in question, but we do have a de jure attribution from which some knowledge may be derived, we can document and follow an instance of Locative Status for an object in relation to a geographic location.

Instances of locative status are recognizable through evidence of community members adopting the intentional stance of so-recognizing this status, as observable from direct witnesses, through the reports of competent observers or through evidence of a declarative act initiating this status.

Instances of locative status may come to be through a formal process such as a declarative act of such definition, or may have arisen through habit, fiat or be of unknown origin. Instances of locative status may end either though a formal process, such as a new declarative act, or may simply fade out of use, be eliminated by fiat or be of unknown reason.

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