From Antiquities to Heritage

From Antiquities to Heritage PDF Author: Anne Eriksen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382992
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Get Book Here

Book Description
Eighteenth-century gentleman scholars collected antiquities. Nineteenth-century nation states built museums to preserve their historical monuments. In the present world, heritage is a global concern as well as an issue of identity politics. What does it mean when runic stones or medieval churches are transformed from antiquities to monuments to heritage sites? This book argues that the transformations concern more than words alone: They reflect fundamental changes in the way we experience the past, and the way historical objects are assigned meaning and value in the present. This book presents a series of cases from Norwegian culture to explore how historical objects and sites have changed in meaning over time. It contributes to the contemporary debates over collective memory and cultural heritage as well to our knowledge about early modern antiquarianism.

From Antiquities to Heritage

From Antiquities to Heritage PDF Author: Anne Eriksen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382992
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Get Book Here

Book Description
Eighteenth-century gentleman scholars collected antiquities. Nineteenth-century nation states built museums to preserve their historical monuments. In the present world, heritage is a global concern as well as an issue of identity politics. What does it mean when runic stones or medieval churches are transformed from antiquities to monuments to heritage sites? This book argues that the transformations concern more than words alone: They reflect fundamental changes in the way we experience the past, and the way historical objects are assigned meaning and value in the present. This book presents a series of cases from Norwegian culture to explore how historical objects and sites have changed in meaning over time. It contributes to the contemporary debates over collective memory and cultural heritage as well to our knowledge about early modern antiquarianism.

Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade

Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade PDF Author: Neil Brodie
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813033396
Category : Antiquities
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of essays, this work investigates the ways that commodifying artifacts fuels the destruction of archaeological heritage and considers what can be done to protect it. It argues that the antiquities market impacts cultural heritage around the world and is a burgeoning global crisis.

Antiquities Under Siege

Antiquities Under Siege PDF Author: Lawrence Rothfield
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759110991
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
As Saddam Hussein's government fell in April 2003, news accounts detailed the pillage of Iraq's National Museum. Less dramatic, though far more devastating, was the subsequent looting at thousands of archaeological sites around the country, which continues on a massive scale to this day. This book details the disasters that have befallen Iraq's cultural heritage, analyzes why all efforts to protect it have failed, and identifies new mechanisms and strategies to prevent the mistakes of Iraq from being replicated in other war-torn regions.

Who Owns Antiquity?

Who Owns Antiquity? PDF Author: James Cuno
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400839246
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
Whether antiquities should be returned to the countries where they were found is one of the most urgent and controversial issues in the art world today, and it has pitted museums, private collectors, and dealers against source countries, archaeologists, and academics. Maintaining that the acquisition of undocumented antiquities by museums encourages the looting of archaeological sites, countries such as Italy, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and China have claimed ancient artifacts as state property, called for their return from museums around the world, and passed laws against their future export. But in Who Owns Antiquity?, one of the world's leading museum directors vigorously challenges this nationalistic position, arguing that it is damaging and often disingenuous. "Antiquities," James Cuno argues, "are the cultural property of all humankind," "evidence of the world's ancient past and not that of a particular modern nation. They comprise antiquity, and antiquity knows no borders." Cuno argues that nationalistic retention and reclamation policies impede common access to this common heritage and encourage a dubious and dangerous politicization of antiquities--and of culture itself. Antiquities need to be protected from looting but also from nationalistic identity politics. To do this, Cuno calls for measures to broaden rather than restrict international access to antiquities. He advocates restoration of the system under which source countries would share newly discovered artifacts in exchange for archaeological help, and he argues that museums should again be allowed reasonable ways to acquire undocumented antiquities. Cuno explains how partage broadened access to our ancient heritage and helped create national museums in Cairo, Baghdad, and Kabul. The first extended defense of the side of museums in the struggle over antiquities, Who Owns Antiquity? is sure to be as important as it is controversial. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Plundered Empire

Plundered Empire PDF Author: Michael Greenhalgh
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900440547X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 696

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book concentrates on the sometimes Greek but largely Roman survivals many travellers set out to see and perhaps possess throughout the immense Ottoman Empire, on what were eastward and southward extensions of the Grand Tour. Europeans were curious about the Empire, Christianity’s great rival for centuries, and plenty of information on its antiquities was available, offered here via lengthy quotations. Most accounts of the history of collecting and museums concentrate on the European end. Plundered Empire details how and where antiquities were sought, uncovered, bartered, paid for or stolen, and any tribulations in getting them home. The book provides evidence for the continuing debate about the ethics of museum collections, with 19th century international competition the spur to spectacular acquisitions.

Trade in Illicit Antiquities

Trade in Illicit Antiquities PDF Author: Neil Brodie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
All over the world archaeological sites are being looted to feed an ever-expanding antiquities market. The phenomenon has been well-documented, by journalists and TV documentaries as much as by academic study, but it true scale remains a matter for conjecture. With this in mind in October 1999 the McDonald Institute convened an international symposium of archaeologists and other interested parties, which allowed them to give accounts of looting in their own countries, share their experiences, and to consider possible remedies or preventative measures. The proceedings of the Symposium are now published in this volume.

Whose Culture?

Whose Culture? PDF Author: James Cuno
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400833043
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
The international controversy over who "owns" antiquities has pitted museums against archaeologists and source countries where ancient artifacts are found. In his book Who Owns Antiquity?, James Cuno argued that antiquities are the cultural property of humankind, not of the countries that lay exclusive claim to them. Now in Whose Culture?, Cuno assembles preeminent museum directors, curators, and scholars to explain for themselves what's at stake in this struggle--and why the museums' critics couldn't be more wrong. Source countries and archaeologists favor tough cultural property laws restricting the export of antiquities, have fought for the return of artifacts from museums worldwide, and claim the acquisition of undocumented antiquities encourages looting of archaeological sites. In Whose Culture?, leading figures from universities and museums in the United States and Britain argue that modern nation-states have at best a dubious connection with the ancient cultures they claim to represent, and that archaeology has been misused by nationalistic identity politics. They explain why exhibition is essential to responsible acquisitions, why our shared art heritage trumps nationalist agendas, why restrictive cultural property laws put antiquities at risk from unstable governments--and more. Defending the principles of art as the legacy of all humankind and museums as instruments of inquiry and tolerance, Whose Culture? brings reasoned argument to an issue that for too long has been distorted by politics and emotionalism. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sir John Boardman, Michael F. Brown, Derek Gillman, Neil MacGregor, John Henry Merryman, Philippe de Montebello, David I. Owen, and James C. Y. Watt.

Heritage and the Existential Need for History

Heritage and the Existential Need for History PDF Author: Maud Webster
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813057779
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Get Book Here

Book Description
In a sweeping survey of archaeological sites spanning thousands of years, Heritage and the Existential Need for History asks fundamental questions about the place of cultural heritage in Western society. What is history? Why do we write about the events of yesterday and set up memorials for them? Why do we visit places where momentous things have happened? Maud Webster takes readers on a journey from Bronze Age Mycenae through the Greek Dark Ages, from Medieval Rome through the Italian Renaissance, and from Viking Sweden to Restoration-period England and Civil War America. Combining archaeology, history, and psychology, Webster explores themes including literacy and text, monumentality and spoliation, and death and identity. She traces the human need for history at two levels—the collective, here shown through archaeological evidence, and the individual, shown through written records and the behavior they document. Webster’s robust cross-examination of artifacts and texts, and the illustrations drawn from this methodology, attest that locating our history helps us anchor ourselves, for multiple purposes and from varying perspectives, and that the drive to write and build histories is an enduring part of the human experience.

Multiple Antiquities - Multiple Modernities

Multiple Antiquities - Multiple Modernities PDF Author: Gábor Klaniczay
Publisher: Campus Verlag
ISBN: 3593391015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 613

Get Book Here

Book Description
Antiquity, as the term has been understood and used over the centuries by scholars, political and religious figures, and ordinary citizens, is far from a single, monolithic concept. Rather than reflecting a stable, shared understanding about the past and its meaning, the idea of antiquity is instead varying and multiple, taking on different meanings and deployed to different effects depending on the context in which it is being considered. In this volume, historians from a wide range of specialties offer a comparative assessment of the multiple perceptions of antiquity that have shaped modern European cultures and national identities, deploying a new methodological approach, histoire croisée, which considers these questions in light of the development of cultural diversity across Europe.

Illicit Antiquities

Illicit Antiquities PDF Author: Neil Brodie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134568223
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

Get Book Here

Book Description
The exploitation of archaeological sites for commercial gain is a serious problem worldwide. In peace and during wartime archaeological sites and cultural institutions, both on land and underwater, are attacked and their contents robbed for sale on an international 'antiquities' market. Objects are excavated without record, smuggled across borders and sold for exorbitant prices in the salesrooms of Europe and North America. In some countries this looting has now reached such a scale as to threaten the very survival of their archaeological and cultural heritage. This volume highlights the deleterious effects of the trade on cultural heritage, but in particular it focuses upon questions of legal and local responses: How can people become involved in the preservation of their past and what, in economic terms, are the costs and benefits? Are international conventions or export restrictions effective in diminishing the volume of the trade and the scale of its associated destruction?