Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
When I first heard about this book I knew I would have to review it. The question of who owns the items archaeologists dig up has been the subject of a long, and frequently bitter, debate. Here in the United States the debate centers around NAGPRA and the repatriation of human remains and artifacts. In other areas of the world the debate concerns cultural knowledge (think ethnopharmacology) and even genetics. Indigenous peoples are pitted against archaeologists, and in turn, the archaeologists are pitted against museums. The debate doesn't end there though, consider the case of the Elgin Marbles which pits the nations of Greece and Britain against each other. As we will see below, the debate gets a very complicated very quickly, especially when nationalism gets involved.
I myself have always been moderately conservative on the issue. In general I think there is something to be said for repatriation of human remains and artifacts to the cultures that produced them, although I think we should exercise some caution and forethought. Consequently, I found Who Owns Antiquity? to be somewhat congenial to my point of view.
James Cuno is the President and Director of the Art Institute of Chicago and in Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage he has written a thoughtful, articulate, and somewhat controversial, book examining the idea that the past can be owned.
The book is short, only about 162 pages long (not including footnotes and such) and consists of a preface, introduction and five chapters. The preface lays out the themes that will be explored in the rest of the book. In it, Cuno looks and the interconnections between six objects found in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The items come from diverse times and places, yet in them, as Cuno says:
...we have seen how different cultures use, reuse, and transform other cultures' objects or decorative motifs, either indifferently or because they add value to the object in its new cultural setting.And in each instance, we have admired the beauty and workmanship of the object and the sophistication of the culture within which it was produced. Unsuspected connections were made between cultures and great distances in space and time were overcome.
This is a theme Cuno will return to and expand upon in the introduction and five succeeding chapters. Anyone who has read Eric Wolf's Europe and the People Without History will understand the point. Throughout history people have migrated, traded, invaded, and commingled. Consider China's Spice Road or the trade routes the run through Africa and the Middle East. Cultures have passed their goods along both of these routes and in the process those items have been modified and imbued with new meanings and associations not intended by the original manufacturer. Who owns them? For Cuno, the answer is everybody. According to Cuno, however, there is a glitch. The glitch comes in the form of "national retentionist cultural property laws". For Cuno:
All cultures are dynamic, mongrel creations, interrelated such that we all have a stake in their preservation. National retentionist cultural property laws deny this basic truth. They depend on the myth of pure, static, distinct, national cultures. And not just about living cultures, but about ancient cultures, too. They define and seek to regulate access to ancient cultures on the grounds that they belong to the modern nation as the work of its descendents and the origins of its modern culture and identity. They promote a sectarian view of culture and encourage the politics of identity at a time when nationalism and sectarian violence are resurgent in the world.
National retentionist cultural property laws are a form of historical revisionism, where modern creations reach back into the past and try to use the past to legitimate themselves. Chapters three and four look as specific examples. Chapter Three looks at Turkey and Chapter Four looks at China. China, for example, has imposed severe restrictions on the sale of Chinese artifacts outside the country. Ostensibly, this is to protect China's archaeological sites from looting, yet within China the sale of these artifacts is a mulitbillion dollar industry, with no regard given to whether the artifacts were legitimately acquired or looted. For Cuno, this a poster child for the failure of these types of laws. The original intention of such laws and restrictions was to protect archaeological sites from looting. Most countries, even rich ones like the US, have neither the people power nor the money to protect all the archaeological sites withing their territory. Import restrictions were supposed to be a way around this. The thinking is that if there is no market for the artifacts, then looting will stop and people will find other ways to make money. Cuno argues that most of these laws have been abject failures. Looting of archaeological sites around the world is growing at an exponential rate.
What them to do. Cuno argues that we need to do a couple of things. Fiest, we need more and better encyclopedic museums (as opposed to Nationalistic museums) around the world. Second, we need to return to the system of partage - where excavators were allowed to keep some of the artifacts from there digs. He cites the example of Japan, where the government chooses the best of the items and allows the rest to be sent abroad.
Cuno's book makes a fascinating argument for what is wrong with current practice, but ultimately, I was a little disappointed in his solutions. It seems to me that more is required than more museums and more sharing of artifacts, but maybe he is just as puzzled about what else to do as I am.
I must also confess that I am a little bit disappointed at my own review of Cuno's book. In some ways I have barely scratched the surface of his argument and strongly recommend that anyone interested in the subject read the book - no matter what your position. It is one of the few books that I have read that has caused me to have a long running conversation, sometimes in agreement, sometimes in disagreement, with the text. In my mind this is the hallmark of a good book.
Comments
I had a situation related to this in grad school. We were in a class where the final was a paper that would have potentially been published, the top two papers were submitted. My paper was significantly better than the two papers that were ultimately chosen, we had to peer review and grade drafts of each others papers, but both of them were far less controversial. My classmates were shocked, even those whose papers were ultimately published, that mine wasn't chosen.
Based on their notes, the professor was vehemently opposed to repatriation, but really didn't have any legitimate critical arguments against my paper or writing style.
Posted by: dogmeatib | May 7, 2008 11:08 PM
As a naive twenty-something with a freshly minted BA, I was shocked to have the statement I had written for my grad school application harshly criticized by one of my proofreaders (a former professor) because I outlined my interest in studying the ethics and laws surrounding the repatriation of human remains and grave goods. Like the commenter above, it had nothing to do with the style or how clear and concise my statement was, but the content therein.
Posted by: E. | May 8, 2008 2:29 AM
I wonder how the destruction by a country of its heritage fits into this. As an example, when a new government seeks to destroy traces of the old (such as when the giant Buddha statues were blown up). Or, to make things even more complicated, what if we know that a country doesn't have the resources (or the necessary allocation of those resources) to properly care for its artifacts and monuments?
Is it legitimate for the more "historically conscious" countries to intervene and confiscate the artifacts? Sort of like a social worker system for history?
Posted by: Grimalkin | May 8, 2008 8:17 AM
@ #1 And #2
What's going on here? Did both of you just happen to have a relevant experience that was about some vauge area of international law?
Posted by: Amplexus | May 9, 2008 2:14 AM
Amplexus - anyone who works in anthropology has to deal with these laws, so while they may be obscure to the rest of the world, they have a major impact on what anthropologists do.
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | May 9, 2008 7:50 AM
As a citizen of the United Kingdom I'd just like to point out that I and my fellow citizens both favor returning the Elgin Marbles to Greece.
So it's really the British Museum vs the rest of the world at this point.
Posted by: NoAstronomer | May 9, 2008 11:36 AM
What about in North America, where the Native Americans moved around, but they were all still Native Americans? The argument is harder to make in this case. Also, what does Cuno say about skeletons or other human remains? Does the collective museum world own those too?
Posted by: Native American archaeologist | May 10, 2008 8:13 AM