Two archives, queried live.
Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 16 shown for “Ceremonial ax” — 64 records examined, 36 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-08-28 13:20 UTC · served from cache, not re-queried for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Ceremonial Ax
Artist not stated in the record · 13th–11th century BCE

Fragment of a ceremonial axe
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1050-771 BCE

Ceremonial ax
Artist not stated in the record

Axe (fu 斧)
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 2000-1700 BCE

Ceremonial Ax
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 500 BCE–300 CE

Axe (fu 斧)
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1600-1050 BCE

Ax
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1450–1500

Axe-shaped ornament
Artist not stated in the record · 1736-1795

Ceremonial Object in the Shape of an Ax
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 100 BCE–300 CE

Ceremonial ax
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 500 BCE

Ceremonial dagger-ax (Ge)
Artist not stated in the record · 13th–11th century BCE

Crescent-Shaped Ax Head (Chandrasa)
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 500 BCE–300 CE

Ceremonial dagger-ax
Artist not stated in the record

Ceremonial dagger-ax?
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 500 BCE

Ceremonial dagger-ax (Ge)
Artist not stated in the record · 13th–11th century BCE

Pair of Dagger-Axes (Ge)
Artist not stated in the record · 4th–3rd century BCE
Where these records came from.
Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.
- The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field:
isPublicDomain. 49 matched · 24 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.12 shown - Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field:
content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 16707 matched · 40 examined · 36 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.4 shown
These figures describe the pass run at 2026-08-28 13:20 UTC, replayed here rather than repeated. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.
Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.
An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.