Category: Events and Conferences

On October 29 DePaul will sponsor a symposium examining the restitution and repatriation of cultural objects. From the announcement:

DePaul’s cultural heritage symposium will bring together lawyers, museum ! professionals, representatives of indigenous communities, and other scholars and experts in the field to examine the repatriation of cultural artifacts. Participants will discuss the repatriation of cultural objects appropriated in the more distant past whose restitution some view as outside the scope of existing law, but others view as a matter of restitutionary justice. They also will address the repatriation of artifacts looted in recent times whose removal is often viewed as causing contemporary damage to the cultural heritage of communities and nations and to the historical and cultural record.

It looks like a promising event, with some important advocates and figures in some current disputes. Unfortunately teaching will likely prevent me from attending.

World-renowned historian Lynn Nicholas will deliver the keynote address entitled “Restitution and Repatriation: Expectations and Reality.” Mrs. Nicholas is the author of The Rape of Europa, a groundbreaking history of the looting of art works during World War II that has become the fundamental account of this era. Her work exemplifies the best of historical research with relevance to restitutionary justice for victims of the Holocaust.

Repatriation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Objects: History & Synopsis In recent years, countries of origin have successfully recovered illegally removed archaeological and ethnographic objects. Indigenous and Native American communities also have successfully recovered cultural artifacts excavated from ancient burial sites. Such recoveries are the result of a patchwork of legal rules, treaties and extra-legal pressure placed on the current possessor. The museum community and some market participants now accept that archaeological objects unprovenanced before 1970 should not be acquired without proof of legal export. However, countries of origin have recently sought to move beyond the “1970 rule” and are requesting the repatriation of objects appropriated during earlier times as a part of imperialism, colonialism, or armed conflict. The underlying bases supporting repatriation in such cases are often unclear, and the validity of these repatriation claims is hotly debated.

Well-known examples of historical claims include Nigeria’s request for repatriation of the Benin bronzes that British troops removed during the 1897 “Punitive Expedition”; China’s efforts to seek the return of bronze animal heads, once part of the zodiac fountain clock in the Yuanming Yuan garden of the Old Summer Palace that French and English troops looted and burned in 1860, and the recent move by Turkey to recover antiquities taken before 1970, including the Zeugma mosaic. U.S. indigenous communities have recovered cultural artifacts within the legal structure of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), but some claims and museums have acted outside of NAGPRA as well. Finally, the symposium will address the tensions that arise when a fiduciary duty arguably conflicts with a perceived legal or moral obligation to return a cultural object.

Rutgers’ Graduate Program in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies (CHAPS) will be holding a conference October 12-14:

Marking the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention and the 20th anniversary of the inclusion of Cultural Landscapes as a category within the convention, Rutgers University will convene an international conference—Cultural Landscapes: Preservation Challenges in the 21st Century. The conference has been designated an official UNESCO World Heritage Anniversary event. 

Cultural landscapes provide a new perspective that challenges traditional notions of historic preservation by taking a dynamic, multifaceted approach to conservation. Constituting “combined works of nature and humankind [that] express a long and intimate relationship between peoples and their natural environment, ” cultural landscapes are defined by human relationships to place as much as by physical features. They embody diverse interactions between humans and their environment, seek to protect living traditional cultures, and preserve the traces of cultures that have disappeared. The UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), approved by the 17th General Assembly of ICOMOS in November 2011, Assembly of ICOMOS in November 2011, applies an interdisciplinary “cultural landscape approach” to cities, towns and settlements, as a way to integrate diverse aspects of urban vitality within our shared urban heritage. This international conference will bring together leading scholars and practitioners from around the world to examine five core themes around the concept, implementation, and management of cultural and historic urban landscapes. The conference will provide an interdisciplinary forum for forward-looking approaches to 21st century challenges, with the objective of mapping strategies for a ten-year plan of action within these areas. Conference proceedings will be published.  

Cultural Landscapes: Preservation Challenges in the 21st Century provides a unique opportunity in time and place for the United States to reaffirm its presence within the international arena of cultural heritage preservation. Cultural landscapes and historic urban landscapes are at the nexus of current efforts in the United States to address our diverse cultural heritage and to revitalize the livability of the nation’s communities through preservation of the authentic sense of place. Rutgers’ Graduate Program in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies (CHAPS) in the School of Arts and Sciences will sponsor the conference. Co-sponsors include the US National Park Service, Penn Cultural Heritage Center (UPenn), the Columbia Historic Preservation Program (Columbia), the Center for Art and Cultural Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School (Princeton), the International Institute for Cultural Property (Princeton), the Center for Heritage and Society (UMass/Amherst), Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World (Brown University), the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (Rutgers), the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy (Rutgers), the Initiative on Climate and Society (Rutgers), and Rutgers Law School, Newark.

The Hellenic Society for Law and Archaeology and the Institut fur Kunst und recht are putting together a conference at the Acropolis Museum in Athens in a few week on May 19th 2012. The conference aims:

• to examine the need of reforming the existing legal framework on international, European and national level and to offer proposals to take a closer look at: 
• the legal trends and the challenges they create for member states
• the strengths and deficiencies of the two major international conventions as well as the regulations of European and national law  
• to discuss the legal reforms currently underway in European Law 
• to present and examine case studies from Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Austria 
• to network and exchange ideas with leading professionals

The Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren), the  Free University Brussels and the University of Leuven are organizing an international conference in October titled “Norms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm: the Social Construction of Illegality” October 25-27 in Belgium.

The international conference Norms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm. The social Construction of Illegality aims at fostering a cross-disciplinary debate on everyday practice seen as systems of practical norms in realms more commonly considered from a legal or moral standpoint. Political scientists, jurists, historians, sociologists and social anthropologists will exchange their views on interactions between normative systems produced by official actors such as States or international organizations and those systems of norms informing the actions of actors thriving in the margins of official categories. Official categories emerge as highly political creations, while powerlessness in the margin reveals itself as relative. Market oriented economy intertwines with underground networks and these interconnections produce implicit norms that are also produced in the loopholes of law in various spheres of societies. These themes will be analysed through case studies bearing on traffics in art, drugs, organs, etc as well as on corruption, the cultural production of rules, etc.

I have been forwarded on a conference announcement for an upcoming event at Durham University. It looks to be a promising event.

Durham University Archaeology Society Conference 2012
Title: Whose Past? An Interdisciplinary debate on the repatriation of artefacts and reburial of human remains
When: Saturday April 28th 2012- 09:00-18:00

Where: Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Dawson Building, Durham University Science Site
Durham University Archaeology Society is to hold a one day interdisciplinary conference, to be held at Durham University involving the Archaeology, Anthropology, Philosophy and Law departments from Durham and Newcastle University and selected guest speakers. This year’s theme ‘Whose Past’ aims to generate a stimulating debate about the ownership and ethical principles associated with two types of archaeological material; artefacts and human remains, with the focus on the repatriation of artefacts and reburial of human remains.

The day will be divided into two sessions themed based first on Artefacts, then on Human Remains. Each session will follow the same format- where a debate question is set and the two guest speakers argue one in proposition and the other in opposition. Each session will contain a mixture of archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers and lawyers, who will provide their viewpoint, and then finally there is an open discussion for attendees to debate the theme and issues raised within the session. At the end of the day a conference conclusion debate will be held where conclusions will be drawn relating to the key themes and questions. In recent years the ethics and ownership of artefacts and human remains have entered the spotlight. The debate regarding the ownership of artefacts came under fire in the United Kingdom, due to the Crosby Garrett Helmet. The British museum is under increasing pressure to repatriate its most controversial artefacts including the Elgin Marbles, the Benin Bronzes, the Rosetta Stone and the Mold Gold Cape to name just a few.  The conference will explore issues raised relating to this example such as legislation relating to artefacts, repatriation, and stewardship/custodianship- should artefacts and human remains be kept for scientific research or given back to the indigenous community?

The repatriation of artefacts will be the key theme in the first session, with the debate question:  ‘Western
museums should take a sympathetic view to requests for the repatriation of cultural artefacts’. The repatriation of human remains has also been in the spotlight due to a number of recent cases including the repatriation of human remains from the Natural History Museum to the Torres Straits in March 2011, Namibian skulls from Germany in October 2011. The mummified Maori heads from France are expected to be repatriated in
January 2012 and back in 2006 British Museum repatriated human ashes back to Tasmania.

In August 2011, the druid King Arthur Pendragon had his case for the human remains found at Stonehenge, to be reburied immediately, rejected by the High Court. This legal case is the latest threat to burial archaeology including the legislative changes in 2008 which archaeologists argue is causing “severe damage to research and the advancement of knowledge”. The session will explore the issues including the treatment of the dead and reburial.

The debate question for the human remains session will be: ‘The recent legislative changes relating to human
remains are a threat to academic research’.

Jamie Davies
Durham University Archaeology Society Vice President
March 2012