Carolyn Dean's essay of 2006, ‘The Trouble with (the Term) Art’, offers a provocative set of challenges to the very notion of archaeological art. This essay attempts to refocus some of Dean's questions and to answer them by exploring different lines of evidence, especially through the development of the art museum in the twentieth century. Finally, the author explores whether the twenty-first century observer can gain insight into the meanings of some ancient materials by consideration of their destruction.