Restitution of Cultural Property and the Law : Complex Colonial Histories

This book adopts a novel approach to the social question of restitution and repatriation of sacred cultural property and heritage acquired unethically during the colonial era. It uses an approach premised on better integration of law, ethics, history, anthropology, and provenance research.

To bridge the material and the sacred world in adjudication and policy formulation, a common definition of what the ‘sacred’ denotes in the context of colonial legacies is adopted as a viable methodology. ‘Sacred’ loot in private and public collections is defined based on clues imparted by disputes which are paradigmatic of the fragmentation that envelops the material, the systems of knowledge associated with that material, the structure and method of international law, subject specialisations, and the legal frameworks in play. The book suggests that the Parthenon Sculptures dispute and the parallel transnational litigation in the Zhanggong Zushi Statue cases offer practical approaches for deconstructing hurdles and assumptions concerning historical claims in the secondary legal norms and tenets of PrIL.

It will be of interest to researchers interested in interdisciplinary work across the humanities and social sciences, including public and private international law, cultural property law, heritage law, and provenance research and practice.

Christa Roodt is Senior Lecturer in the School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom. She specialises in the provenance and restitution of cultural heritage and acts as consultant on projects designed to achieve a more appropriate international regime for the protection and return of cultural objects removed from colonial, archaeological, and Nazi-era contexts. She is a serving member of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.