Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice

Notes on Contributors
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction

I. Meaning and Memory
1. Culture, Heritage, and Ethics, Constantine Sandis
2. Poppy Politics: Remembrance of Things Present, James Fox
3. The Meaning of the Public in an Age of Privatisation, Benjamin Ramm

II. History and Archaeology
4. History as Heritage: Producing the Present in Post-War Sri Lanka, Nira Wickramasinghe
5. Looking at the Acropolis of Athens from Modern Times to Antiquity, William St Clair
6. South Asian Heritage and Archaeological Practices, Sudeshna Guha
7. The Ethics of Digging, Geoffrey Scarre

III. Ownership and Restitution
8. 'National' Heritage and Scholarship, Sir John Boardman
9. Fear of Cultural Objects, Tom Flynn
10. Restitution, Sir Mark Jones

IV. Management and Protection
11. The Possibilities and Perils of Heritage Management, Michael F. Brown
12. Values in World Heritage Sites, Geoffrey Belcher
13. Safeguarding Heritage: From Legal Rights over Objects to Legal Rights for Individuals and Communities?, Marie Cornu

Appendix: Links to Selected International Charters and Conventions on Cultural Heritage

Geoffrey Belcher was formerly Coordinator for the UNESCO Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. He is a member of the RTPI and a RIBA Awarded Conservation Architect.

Sir John Boardman is Professor Emeritus of Classical Art and Archaeology at Oxford. He has excavated in Turkey, Greece and Libya, and published books on Greek art, classical gems and the Greeks in Asia. These include The Greeks Overseas (1964; 4th ed. 1999), Excavations at Emporio, Chios (1964), Archaic Greek Gems (1968), Greek Burial Customs (1971), Greek Gems and Finger Rings (1970, new ed. 2001), Persia and the West (2000), The History of Greek Vases (2001), The Archaeology of Nostalgia (2002), Greece and the Hellenistic World (2002), The World of Ancient Art (2006), The Marlborough Gems (2009), and The Relief Plaques of Central Asia and China (2010).

Michael F. Brown is President of the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA. His books include Who Owns Native Culture? (2003), and Upriver: The Turbulent Life and Times of an Amazonian People (2014).

Marie Cornu is Research Director at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and director of the CECOJI (Research Centre on the International Legal Cooperation), University of Poitiers. Her research interests focus on cultural property law and art law. In cooperation with Prof. Jérôme Fromageau, she co-leads an international research group that recently published a comparative dictionary on cultural property law.

Tom Flynn is founder of The Sculpture Agency and a visiting lecturer at Kingston University. He has written for The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, Art Review, Apollo, Art News, Museums Journal, The Spectator, and many others. His books include The Body in Sculpture (1998); Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (1998, co-ed. with T. Barringer), The Paintings of Clive Head (2000), Jedd Novatt (2008), Sean Henry (2009), Skate's Art Investment Handbook, 2nd ed. (2010), and The Sculpture of Terence Coventry (2012).

James Fox is a Research Fellow in Art History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. He has previously held research positions at Harvard, Churchill College, Cambridge, and the Yale Center for British Art. He is currently preparing a monograph on British art during the First World War.

Sudeshna Guha is at present Associate Researcher at Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (FAMES), and Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge (UK). She researches on the history of archaeology and South Asia and has recently submitted for publication her first monograph, Artefacts of History: Archaeology, Historiography and Indian Pasts.

Sir Mark Jones is currently Master of St Cross College, Oxford. He was a curator in the British Museum for seventeen years before becoming Director first of the National Museums of Scotland and then of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Benjamin Ramm is a writer and broadcaster, and Research Fellow at Gladstone's Library, Wales. He is the former editor of The Liberal magazine, and author of Citizens: A Manifesto.

Constantine Sandis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and an intenrational collaborator of the Centre de Recherche en Éthique (CRÉ) in Montréal. He is the author of The Things We Do and Why We Do Them (2012) and has edited numerous books on the philosophy of action and human nature.

Geoffrey Scarre is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, UK and founder and director of the Durham University Centre for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage. His books include Death (2007), Mill’s ‘On Liberty’: A Reader’s Guide (2007) and On Courage (2010); he has also edited (with Chris Scarre) The Ethics of Archaeology (2006) and (with Robin Coningham) Appropriating the Past (2013).

William St Clair is a Fellow of the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. His books include Lord Elgin and the Marbles (1967; 3rd rev. ed. 1998), That Greece Might Still Be Free (1972, 2nd rev. ed. 2008), Trelawny, the Incurable Romancer (1977), The Godwins and the Shelleys (1989), The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004), and The Grand Slave Emporium (2006).

Nira Wickramasinghe is Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University and the author and editor of numerous books including Dressing the Colonised Body: Politics, Clothing and Ethnic Politics in Colonial Sri Lanka 1927-1947 (1995), Civil Society in Sri Lanka. New Circles of Power (2001), History Writing: New Trends and Methodologies (2001), Identity in Colonial Sri Lanka (2003), Sri Lanka in the Modern Age - A History of Contested Identities (2006), and Metallic Modern - Everyday Machines in colonial Sri Lanka (2014).

© 2014 Constantine Sandis. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapter’s author(s).


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work).

Attribution should include the following information:

Constantine Sandis, Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2014, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0047

Please see the list of illustrations below for attribution relating to individual images:

1.1) Blue glass sugar bowl inscribed in gilt ‘EAST INDIA SUGAR not made by SLAVES’, Bristol, 1820-30. British Museum. Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:East_India_
Sugar_not_made_by_Slaves_Glass_sugar_bowl_BM.jpg
1.2) Statue of Edward Colston by John Cassidy, erected in 1895 on Colston Avenue, Bristol. Photograph by William Avery (2006). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Colston_1895_statue.jpg (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported license).
1.3) English Heritage blue plaque for Nancy Astor. Photograph by Simon Harriyott (2010). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nancy_Astor_(4313985760).jpg (CC BY 2.0 Generic license).

5.1) The Parthenon from the north-west. Author’s photograph, 6 October 2013.
5.2) The Parthenon from the north-west. Entrance ticket to the Acropolis, issued on 6 October 2013.
5.3) The Parthenon from the north-west, c.1909, before the re-erection of the colonnade in the 1920s. Postcard. Pharazes and Michalopoulos of Athens, date of first publication unknown, but some time before the postcard was posted from Athens on 6 April 1909. Author’s collection.
5.4) The Parthenon from the north-west. Photographic print, ?1880s, source uncertain. Author’s collection.
5.5) The Parthenon from the north-west, autumn 1839. Aquatint engraving of a daguerreotype made on the spot by Joly de Lotbinière. Author’s collection.
5.6) The Parthenon as it appeared in antiquity, as imagined in 1788. Copper engraving. ‘Vue perspective du Parthénon’, engraved by Ambroise Tardieu, plate 18 in the Atlas volume that accompanied the edition of Anacharsis published in Paris by Ledoux in 1821.
5.7) The Parthenon from the north-west, c.1805. Aquatint from a drawing by Edward Dodwell, in his Views in Greece from Drawings (London: Rodwell and Martin, 1821). Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dodwell_Parthenon_1.jpg
5.8) The Acropolis south slopes around 1858. Albumen print of a photograph by Felix Bonfils. Author’s collection.
5.9) The ancient path on the north side under the caves. Photograph, c.1910. Ernst Reisinger (ed.), Griechenland, Landschaften und Bauten, Schilderungen Deutscher Reisender (Leipzig: Im Insel Verlag, 1916), 4.
5.10) The cave of Pan on the north slope, looking out. Author’s photograph, 2 October 2013.
5.11) Greece, invoking Homer and the ruins of ancient Hellas, calls on Europe for help, 1821. Copper engraving. Σάλπισμα πολεμιστήριον [‘A Trumpet Call to War’], a pamphlet by Adamantios Koraes that purports to have been printed ‘In the Peloponnese from the Hellenic Press of Atrometos of Marathon’, but was actually printed in Paris by overseas Greeks, 1821.
5.12) Caryatid looking towards Philopappus, 1929. Photograph by Walter Hege. Akropolis aufgenommen von Water Hege, beschrieben von Gerhard Rodenwaldt (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1930).
5.13) North-west corner of the Parthenon, 1923. Photograph by Hans Hold. Hans Hold and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Griechenland-Baukunst, Landschaft, Volksleben (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1923).
5.14) Viewing the Acropolis, c.1898. Woodcut from an original work by A. Kirscher. From an illustration in Das Buch fur Alle, a German journal, c.1898.
5.15) The Acropolis as seen from the centre of Athens, by Edward Dodwell, c.1805. Coloured aquatint, in Edward Dodwell, Views in Greece from Drawings (London: Rodwell and Martin, 1821). Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Athens-dodwell.jpg
5.16) The Acropolis as seen from a distance by an arriving traveller, c.1800. Aquatint by Louis Cassas, in [Cassas and Bence] Grandes Vues Pittoresques des Principales Sites et Monumens de la Grèce, et de la Sicile, et Des Sept Collines de Rome, Dessinées et Gravées a l’eau-forte, au trait, par MM. Cassas et Bence; Accompagnés d’une Explication des Monumens par M.C.P. Landon (Paris and Strasbourg: Treuttel and Würtz, 1813). Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cassas_Louis-Francois_-_View_of_Athens_with_Hadrians_Aqueduct_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
5.17) The Entrance to the Acropolis, Heinrich Hübsch, 1819. Aquatint published in Denmark with description in Danish. Undated and signed only with the name of the engraver ‘J.B. Peterson sculp.’
5.18) The Muslim cemetery at the entrance to the Acropolis, c.1805. Copper engraving. Simone Pomardi, Viaggio nella Grecia fatto da Simone Pomardi negli anni 1804, 1805, e 1806 (Rome: Poggioli, 1820), i, opposite 143.
5.19) Admission tickets to the Acropolis, mid-1830s. Author’s collection.
5.20) A low denomination bronze coin issued in Athens, Roman period, probably first century AD. Copper engraving. Anacharsis, atlas volume, engraved from a coin then in the French Royal collection. Frequently reproduced, and other examples of the coin have been found later, dispelling fears that it was a fake.
5.21) ‘A View of the Doric Portico at Athens in its present state’, c.1751. Copper engraving. Published by R. Faulder, New Bond Street, July 1793 in [Bisani, Alessandro] A Picturesque Tour through Europe, Asia, and Africa … with Plates after Designs by James Stuart, Written by an Italian Gentleman (London: Faulder, 1793). The same plates were used in an edition of Pausanias published by Faulder.
5.22) Volney’s Ruins. Title page and frontispiece of the English translation.
5.23) ‘Byron’s Dream’, 1819. Copper engraving, sold to be bound into copies of his works. A New Series of Twenty-one Plates to Illustrate Lord Byron’s Works. Engraved by Charles Heath, from Drawings by R. Westall, R.A. With a Portrait, engraved by Armstrong, from the original Picture, by T. Phillips, R.A. (1819).
5.24) ‘The Ruins of Athens’ Copper engraving. Composed by Konrad Martin Metz, 1789, and frequently re-engraved in standard geographical works over many decades. Metz never visited Athens.
5.25) The Parthenon as a symbol of the superiority of the northern white races. Woodcut illustration in Robert Knox, The Races of Men, A Fragment (London: Henshaw, 1850), 396.
5.26) The German flag flying over the Acropolis, 1941. Cover of the monthly magazine Deutsches Wollen (‘The German Will’) for July 1941.
5.27) ‘Mars Hill, Athens’. Chromolithograph, no date, c.1840, from a steel engraving by Clarkson Stanfield from a sketch made on the spot by William Page, first published 1835.
5.28) The essence of the Athenian Acropolis exported to England. Copper engraving by William Sharp, prepared from Stuart’s design for Ralph Willett, A Description of the Library at Merly in the County of Dorset (1785).
5.29) ‘Lord Elgin interrupts his meditations’. Lithograph. Frontispiece to volume 1 of Mazier du Heaume, Hippolyte, Voyage d’un Jeune Grec à Paris (Paris: Fr. Louis, 1824).
5.30) Confuting Hellenism. Mosaic on the church of Saint Philip facing the Acropolis. Author’s photograph.
5.31) Mosaic of the Villa of Siminius Stephanus in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples. Photograph by Matthias Kabel (2012). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mosaic_MAN_Naples_Inv_124545.jpg (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported license).

9.1) Count Greven shoots the Buddhist priest. Frame from the film Fear (Furcht, 1917), directed by Robert Wiene.
9.2) Count Greven encounters the ghostly face of the priest in his cellar. Frame from Fear.
9.3) The spectral image of the Buddhist priest departs with the recovered statuette. Frame from Fear.
9.4) Count Greven with the object of his desire. Frames from Fear.

11.1) The Coronation Chair of Edward I, 1296, with the Stone of Destiny. Anonymous engraver, published in A History of England (1855). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coronation_Chair_and_Stone_of_Scone._Anonymous_Engraver._Published_in_A_History_of_England_(1855).jpg
11.2) King Edward’s Chair, Westminster Abbey, England. Photograph by Kjetil Bjørnsrud (2002). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SanktEdvardsstol_westminster.jpg (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported license).
11.3) The lectern at St Alban’s, Copnor (detail). Photograph by Basher Eyre (2009). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_lectern_at_St_Alban's,_Copnor_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1493823.jpg (CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic license).
11.4) Great Bed of Ware. Author unknown, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1877, p. 23. Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Bed_of_Ware_1877.png
11.5) The opening of St Luke’s Gospel in the Lindisfarne Gospels (715). Folio 139 recto. British Library Online Exhibit. Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lindisfarne_Gospels_folio_139r.jpg
11.6) Chess pieces from Uig, Lewis, now at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net, 2013). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lewis_chessmen,_National_Museum_of_Scotland_1.jpg (CC BY-SA 4.0 International License).
11.7) The Axum Obelisk (also known as the Roman Stele) in Rome, where it stood in front of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s headquarters until 2005. Photograph by Bair175 (1960s). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ethiopian_obelisk_in_Rome_1960.jpg (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported license).
11.8) The Axum Obelisk in Axum. Photograph by Ondřej Žváček (2009). Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rome_Stele.jpg (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported license).
11.9) Basalt stela with a relief of Antiochus I Epiphanes. © Trustees of the British Museum.
11.10) Crown, Ethiopia, 1740. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 164
11.11) Carved marble head of a child, third century, excavated in 1882. Taken by Sir C.W. Wilson from the so-called ‘Sidamara Sarcophagus’. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
11.12) View of the Acropolis from the interior of the New Acropolis Museum. Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acropolis_-_Museum_Interior.JPG
11.13) Chinese Imperial throne, carved lacquer on wood depicting five clawed dragons, Qing dynasty, 1775-80. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omissions or errors will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. As for the rights of the images from Wikimedia Commons, please refer to the Wikimedia website.

Please find embedded below an image from the GettyImages archive, referenced in chapter 1, Constantine Sandis, Culture, Heritage, and Ethics.