This article comes as the conflict in Syria has entered its fifth year, bringing with it loss of life and the displacement of the Syrian people as well as extensive damage to, and destruction of, the country’s cultural heritage. This article will first provide an overview and explanation of the national and international legal framework for protecting cultural property in conflict as it applies to the Syrian State and the non-State actors involved, using examples from the whole conflict, including the recent actions of Da’esh. Second, we demonstrate that the destruction of all types of cultural property, regardless of its importance, can be considered a prosecutable violation of these laws, and we examine the possibilities for prosecution. Following from this discussion, we question whether the existing framework can be considered effective and consider the role the international heritage community can play.

In an influential article published in 2000, David Gill and Christopher Chippindale devised a scale to assess the quality of the provenance information provided for the antiquities displayed in seven recent high-profile exhibitions or collections. This article critically reviews Chippindale and Gill’s provenance scale, arguing that the values it encodes legitimize some of the more intellectually harmful practices of dealers and curators. The scale also fails to differentiate between more intellectually responsible methods of hypothesizing provenance and those that merely generate houses of cards. An alternative model for assessing how antiquities are discussed in museum scholarship, focusing on epistemological precision and reflexivity, is offered.

The concepts of sustainability, and of the more specific notion of sustainable development, have become entrenched in national and international policy making over the last half century. However, little attention has been paid to sustainability as it relates to indigenous communities. This article discusses sustainability concepts as understood in indigenous and non-indigenous societies, drawing a number of illustrations from the experiences and practices of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. We point out that the two approaches to sustainability share many common concerns, although significant differences are evident. While the paradigm of sustainability can be seen as a universal concept that can be applied irrespective of social, political, or cultural context, it is argued that a fully realized model of sustainability for application in non-indigenous societies will only be possible if it acknowledges the importance of culture and incorporates the insights that have been accumulated over generations in indigenous knowledge systems.

This article constitutes the first systematic attempt to synthesize the role of politics as an affecting dynamic during the negotiation of cultural property disputes. The article limits its scope to disputes concerning the ownership of cultural artifacts between states and museums settled through negotiation and to the subsequent claims for the return of the contested objects. The discussion focuses on four ways in which the negotiation process is affected when states act as claimants, including the discourse and argumentation used, the available means to pressure the other party to negotiate, the possible political interventions, and the international political scene and its effect on the development of the dispute. Through the examination of multiple case studies, it is argued that in such disputes, several elements related to the role of politics are at interplay affecting the evolution of the negotiation process. Finally, it is also argued that the role of politics as an affecting dynamic during the negotiation process is multi-dimensional, consisting of many different interrelated dynamics that can potentially alter the course of the process.

Indigenous groups and individuals may have different needs and aspirations in relation to their local plant foods (“bush foods”). Interests may reflect totemic relationships, customary rights and duties, social positions, political and economic motivations, and personal capacities. This article uses a systems method to identify strategies to support the diverse interests of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the commercial development of gourmet bush food products. The aim is to identify possibilities for further consideration by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In 2006, Bolivians began living under their first indigenous president and undergoing an explicitly pro-indigenous “process of change,” alongside much rhetoric of indigenous autonomy and state “decolonization.” However, this article suggests that this same government’s twenty-first century policies regarding intangible heritage and “culture” hardly mark a departure from mid-twentieth-century mestizo-dominated liberal nationalist projects. Through the ethnography of disputed cultural claims to folklore, such as those with Peru involving the devil dance, this article examines how proprietary nationalism is experienced and expressed among certain Bolivians. For example, indignant internationally touring folklore workers imagine a hyperreal scarcity of specific expressions that have become framed as “cultural resources” for the nation. Indeed, it is common to hear propertied language employed when international disputes heat up, as cultural images circulate at high speeds through social networks and digital media. Within these media platforms, the visual sensory mode often overshadows aural and kinesthetic ones, as socially interwoven music and dance expressions fade into the background and stand-alone images of spectacular costumes move forward.

Since “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH) became the new focal point in the global heritage discourse, governments and scholars in many countries have begun to promote this new form of “immaterial” culture. The People’s Republic of China has been one of the most active state parties implementing the new scheme and adapting it to domestic discourses and practices. Policies formulated at the national level have become increasingly malleable to the interests of local government-scholar networks. By conducting a comparative case study of two provinces, this article aims to identify the role of local elite networks in the domestic implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, focusing on the incentives of scholars and officials to participate in ICH policy networks. It finds that the implementation of the Convention has not removed the power asymmetry between elite and popular actors but, instead, has fostered an elite-driven policy approach shaped by symbiotic, mutually legitimizing government–scholar networks.

Since 2000, the United Kingdom’s Spoliation Advisory Panel has provided an alternative dispute resolution mechanism for resolving disputes surrounding Nazi era dispossessions of cultural objects. This article analyzes the way in which the panel has reached its recommendations and how they have been implemented. While the panel’s recommendations provide a means of resolving disputes in circumstances where litigation might fail a claimant, claimants may encounter difficulties should an institution fail to implement the recommended remedy because of the extra-judicial nature of the recommendations. This article therefore analyzes the effectiveness of the panel’s work in overcoming some of the shortcomings of litigation and the way in which the parties have put into effect the panel’s recommendations. Furthermore, suggestions are made for ways in which to ensure compliance with the recommendations even in the absence of judicial enforcement.

The idea that the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean islands became extinct has until recently dominated scholarly discourse and popular awareness. This “extinction” narrative served to justify the appropriation of indigenous lands during the colonial period, and its legacy continued into post-independence. In recent years, these misconceptions have been put under increasing scrutiny, not only by archaeological, historical, and ethnographic research but also, more importantly, by communities themselves. In Dominica, Saint Vincent, and Trinidad, communities are contesting negative stereotypes, reasserting their presence, and agitating for their human rights in the post-colonial islands states. This article discusses the acquisition of indigenous rights by descendant communities in the eastern Caribbean. It reveals the various degrees to which communities have gained state recognition and illustrates that while progress has been made in relation to recognition and cultural rights for communities in the islands, issues remain in relation to land security.

Based on research into the confiscated photographic and document archives in the hands of the top antiquities dealers (Robin Symes-Christos Michaelides, Robert Hecht, Giacomo Medici, and Gianfranco Becchina), so far more than 250 looted and smuggled masterpieces have been repatriated from the most reputable North American museums, private collections, and galleries, mainly to the Italian and the Greek states. Most of these repatriations were advertised in the press as voluntary action by the institutions and the individuals who possessed them. However, this is far from true; the repatriations were the results of lengthy negotiations, where the presentation of evidence alternated with diplomatic tactics and legal threats in order for the two parties (in some cases, three) to reach an agreement. Among the much-celebrated repatriated antiquities are at least two cases that require further research regarding their legal owner. This article aims to analyze these two cases and to set out new questions. In the end, there is doubt that the state who finally received these antiquities is necessarily the one from which they have been looted and smuggled. Based on this analysis, the article aims to highlight alternative paths to the discovery of the truth, paths that might have been more effective, if they had been followed.

This article investigates China’s heritage development from an evolutionary perspective. On the one hand, by situating the reception of the cultural heritage concept in a socio-cultural construct dimension, it reveals the unique dialogism between the two divergent epistemological paradigms of wenwu (cultural relics) and wenhua yichan (cultural heritage) that underline heritage appropriation and practice in China. On the other hand, it examines China’s cultural heritage development in relation to society, arguing that considerations of national heritage, though influenced by the international environment, are still largely determined by its national socio-cultural, economic, and political settings. The evolutionary approach reveals the way in which China’s heritage vision and practice are negotiated according to international forces and societal imperatives, implicating issues such as commodification and reconstruction in the debate of heritage conservation, which is relevant to, among others, the research on heritage tourism and urban development in contemporary China.

The present article discusses perceptions of cultural heritage and the development of heritage management in Ethiopia against the background of various pieces of legislation. Compared to many colonized countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the enactment of laws for the protection and preservation of cultural heritage is a recent phenomenon in Ethiopia. Even though archaeological research in Ethiopia dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, there have been no formal heritage laws or scientific restoration programs until 1966. However, living heritage, which is economically and spiritually beneficial to the local communities, has been protected and preserved with TMSs in communities such as Yeha, Konso, and Lalibela. Unlike Western management systems that emphasize the authenticity and integrity of physical features, the TMSs of Ethiopia have focused on the ideals and thoughts of the agencies that produce the cultural heritage. It had its own implications, to say, while retaining the ideological aspects, most built heritages in Ethiopia have been subjected to considerable physical interventions. Such physical interventions have disregarded structural authenticity and integrity of the monuments. Due to foreign invasions, continuous civil conflicts, and sporadic famines in the past, attention to cultural heritage and the implementation of heritage legislation has been negligent. However, Ethiopia has witnessed growing interest in the conservation and preservation of its heritage—cultural and natural; tangible and intangible—during the last twenty years. With the support of international collaborators, the Ethiopian government has initiated several measures to protect its heritage assets.

This article examines the pros and cons of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). It also examines two cases in which Greek cultural treasures were returned to their country of origin by a US museum and a US collector on the basis of negotiations: the J.P. Getty Museum and the Leon Levy and Shelby White cases respectively. The Parthenon Marbles case is also examined, especially in light of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s recent (2013) invitation to the United Kingdom (UK) to accept mediation on the matter and the UK’s even more recent (2015) rejection of the invitation. In all three cases, the facts are set out and the author attempts an assessment of the ADR means used. Conclusions are drawn as to whether ADR is a feasible and beneficial option for the parties and whether, nowadays, it constitutes the norm in cases when cultural treasures are returned to their countries of origin.