This article problematizes the process of heritage declaration using ethnographic research on the working class carnival produced each year in the historic city center of Puebla, México. The author explores the ways in which the intersection of cultural and political practice in this case has not only called into question the authenticity of certain aspects of this local tradition, but have instead converted them into points of contention among carnival producers.

This paper explores access to the Honduran past with a focus on northwestern Honduras, particularly the Ulua Valley. The foundations of national patrimony legislation and the practice of collecting antiquities are used to explore whether the disassociation of the archaeological community from the collecting sphere over the last several decades has better protected the archaeological record. I argue that early field expeditions led by U.S. archaeologists, the shipment of their finds to U.S. institutions, and subsequent massive looting galvanized Honduran efforts aimed at national patrimony legislation. The roles of the U.S. government and U.S.-based businesses as negotiating bodies in the early days of Honduran expeditions from 1890 to 1940 are explored in detail, particularly in the sphere of opening up the region to collectors and the role of the U.S. antiquities market. We can understand the early days of collecting in Honduras precisely because of the close relationships once forged between collectors, museums, and archaeologists, networks that have now disappeared because of current conceptions of archaeological ethics. The changing definition of a collector represents a key point throughout this analysis; at one time archaeologists, museums, and businesses were the primary collectors. The shift from the label collector to archaeologist is explored through the lens of the development of archaeology as a discipline, with a particular emphasis on context, and the contemporary legislative efforts aimed at cultural heritage projection. The essay concludes with a look at recent archaeological work in the region and the increasingly strict cultural patrimony legislation, specifically the 2004 U.S.–Honduran Memorandum of Understanding.

This article examines the international legal regime that governs cultural commodities by providing an up-to-date stocktaking in the field. In doing so, this paper focuses on the music industry, both as the general backdrop and as a context in which to observe the evolution of the current regulatory regime. It includes a review of the history of the commoditization process of musical goods, the requisite legislative and judicial decisions, the international regulatory environment, and a tripartite case study. By reviewing various approaches and examining several recent arenas where the issues have been implicated, the author demonstrates that, in its current form, the international copyright regime is not sufficiently supportive of diversity in cultural property.

On June 1, 2005, the Swiss Federal Act on the International Transfer of Cultural Property (Cultural Property Transfer Act [CPTA]) and the regulations thereof became effective. The CPTA implements the minimal standards of the UNESCO Convention of 1970 on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The CPTA fills a gap, because Switzerland is not a member state of the Convention of June 24, 1995, on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects (Unidroit Convention 1995). In addition, as a nonmember state of the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Community (EEC), the Council Directive 93/7/EEC of March 15, 1993, on the Return of Cultural Objects Unlawfully Removed from the Territory of a Member State is not applicable. The CPTA enforces foreign export bans in Switzerland. However, claims in Switzerland for return of foreign, illegally exported cultural property are only successful when there is an agreement on the import and return of cultural property between Switzerland and the claiming foreign state. Like Switzerland, the claiming state must be a member state of the UNESCO Convention of 1970.

Vincent Noce, La Collection Egoiste (The Selfish Collector) pp. 328. J. C. Lattès, Paris, 2005. ISBN 2-7096-241-9.

Few people who follow cases relating to the illicit trade can have missed the celebrated case of Stéfane Breitwieser, the Alsatian misfit who stole, over a period of 8 or so years, hundreds of objects from museums and churches to squirrel away in his attic rooms, or that of his mother Mireille Stengel, who destroyed almost all of it by disposal in the family garbage bin or by throwing it into a canal. This book, however, shows just how much a dedicated investigative journalist can add to the record, details that are not only useful in trying to understand the mentality of Breitwieser (by no means an isolated case as this account shows) and even more useful in showing the loopholes in the investigations, the lack of coordination between countries, and the sheer ineptitude of many institutions in securing their collections. Noce, editor of the cultural section of the French newspaper Libération, has joined the select company of Karl Meyer (articles in the New York Times) and Peter Watson who have added greatly to our knowledge of how the illicit trade works. French journalists, too, are greatly helping expose the unsavory details of these activities (see Noce's previous book Descente aux Enchères and that of Emmanuel de Roux and Roland-Pierre Paringaud, Razzia sur L'art).

Lisanne Gibson and Joanna Besley, Monumental Queensland: Signposts on a Cultural Landscape. Pp. 268. $49.95. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2004.

By surveying and documenting outdoor cultural objects, the authors of this book seek to inform communities about the significance of their public art objects and to provide a starting point for people to value such artworks as expressing what is unique about their experience and understanding of Queensland, Australia (p. 7). However, this begs the question of public value. People in colonial times (nineteenth century) gave private subscriptions to have public monuments and memorials erected, and currently, Queensland has a Public Art Agency whose enabling legislation makes it mandatory for all public works projects to fund public art works associated with and integral to new construction, as part of the “Art Built-In” program. Queenslanders clearly like monuments!