Argot Navis

Archaeology has a review by Roger Atwood of James Cuno’s Who Owns Antiquity? in their latest issue. This isn’t particularly breaking news — Looting Matters wrote about the book in late May (and there’s a link to a review from early May in the comments on that post) and Anthony over at ArchaeoBlog wrote about the Archaeology piece on Saturday, although I somehow missed it until I started writing up this post. You can read the whole thing if you click that link, and I haven’t actually read the book, so I’m not totally qualified to comment, so I just wanted to point out a few things that struck me as interesting.

‘What’s standing in the way are governments that illegitimately “claim ownership of the world’s ancient heritage” and practice what he calls identity control–the use of cultural property ownership laws to create and enforce a national identity based on what Cuno feels are spurious connections to the ancient past. “And archaeology and national museums are used as a means of enforcing that control,” he writes.’

I don’t entirely agree with what Cuno is saying here, especially since the “heritage” that governments are “claim[ing] ownership” of refers to the actual antiquities, and not the “who gets to say what about the past” issues that I initially thought this book would be about when I heard the title. I might have to read the book, because I’m curious as to how he justifies his position that American and European “encyclopedic museums” have at least as much claim to ownership as do the national museums of the countries these objects actually came from.

‘As for UNESCO itself, Cuno is clear. The United States should renounce the convention. He draws a parallel with the Bush administration’s decision to ignore international prohibitions on torture: “We know from the actions of the current Bush administration that long-standing international agreements, like the Geneva Convention, can be ignored or partially adhered to in the presumed national interest of the U.S.” The analogy with the Geneva Convention is more apt than he realizes. The information given by a prisoner while he is being tortured is unreliable. So is the information given by a looted antiquity; it has been wrenched from its archaeological context and stripped of its basic history. In certain instances, even its authenticity cannot be definitively ascertained.’

I think Atwood’s take on this is quite good. I hope I would have thought of the same thing had I not been so convinced I was taking crazy pills after reading Cuno’s apparent defense of ignoring the Geneva Conventions. Again, I think I have to read the book, because that must just sound bad out of context. Right?

‘What keeps looting going isn’t poverty or war, but market demand for antiquities. Although Cuno seems to understand this fact, he will not concede that it implicates buyers in the problem. But it does implicate them, and therein lies the fundamental dishonesty of his argument. He goes through the motions of deploring looting but then advocates the activities that cause it, suggesting it cannot be stopped–so why even try? Before long it’s clear that in Cuno’s mind, destruction of the archaeological record is a small price to pay for the enlargement of encyclopedic museums.’

To me, this pretty much hits the nail on the head. I think the argument here is, “Isn’t it better for something to be in a museum than a private collection?” Maybe so, but I don’t think museums should be directly contributing to the demand that keeps the illegal antiquities trade alive.

Anyway, it’s definitely an interesting read. Check it out.