The country of Solomon Islands, like most Pacific island nations, has a legally pluralistic regime. That is, customary law operates in parallel with the common law, a legacy of Solomon Islands' colonial past. Legal pluralism raises significant difficulties, including in the way cultural heritage is protected and managed. To date, the courts have rarely been called on to deal with such issues, but in 2010 the High Court had to examine legislation designed to regulate the recovery and export of World War II relics. This seemingly innocuous case raised a number of issues concerning the rights of different stakeholders to this material. Moreover, it raised a foundational question as to whether these relics might be considered cultural heritage, and if so, just whose heritage it was. A consideration of this case and the legislation that applies to this heritage serves to illustrate some of the difficulties that arise in protecting cultural heritage within pluralistic legal systems.

Charles Byrne was an eighteenth-century celebrity “Irish giant” who requested burial upon nearing death, but whose corpse was procured against his wishes by the surgeon John Hunter. Hunter reduced Byrne's corpse to its skeleton and exhibited it as the centerpiece of his vast anatomical collection. It has since remained on display in the Hunterian Museum, London. In 2011 it was announced that research conducted on the skeleton's DNA has revealed that several Northern Irish families share a common ancestry with Byrne. This article considers the legal issues raised by Byrne's story. The results of fieldwork undertaken by the author in Byrne's native townland are also discussed, where folk tradition suggests that Byrne wished to be buried foremost at a local site remembered today as “the Giant's Grave.”

This article discusses some of the issues regarding the acquisition of art and the different philosophical views of some of the main protagonists regarding the reclaiming of art by nation-states, following American museums' acceptance of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, using examples from the Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The mediation of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) claims by conservators is often an important component of the dialogue between museums and native communities. The philosophical and art-historical opinions regarding the value of copies and reproductions of works of art have oscillated from promulgation in the 1860s to outright rejection by the 1920s. In a modernist sense, points of view are once again open to reevaluation as host nations demand back more originals than ever before. Arguments against the claims of nationalist-retentionist countries and those advanced in favor of the claims of nation-states regarding the repatriation of their art are discussed. The problems created by looted art in association with the ever-increasing number of fakes is highlighted, with examples of the issues surrounding pre-Columbian art and some classical antiquities. The utility of copies in relation to the protective value of the authentic piece is discussed in the context of museum examples in which the concept of the utilization of copies for museum display has been accepted in certain cases as desirable.

In the absence of specific policies that address the digitization of Pacific cultural collections, it is important to document the practices of Australian museum professionals and cultural experts who deal with close to one-fifth of Pacific cultural objects held in museums. Interviews with 17 museum professionals and cultural experts in Australia help advance reflective practice relating to digitizing Pacific collections. Drawing on principles enshrined in international, regional, and Australian policies and protocols relating to the management of indigenous collections, they favor responsible digitization based on consultation with source and diasporic communities. In order to consult across a region with multiple languages and cultures when time and resources are limited, they begin with areas they know best and when possible, work with curators of Pacific backgrounds. Some practicalities of publishing and protecting digitized images online revolve around validating information about the artifact and going beyond copyright to respect traditional knowledge.

The International Journal of Cultural Property is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes papers and other materials representing a broad set of perspectives on problems relating to cultural property, cultural heritage, and related issues. Contributions are welcome from the wide variety of fields implicated in the debates—law, anthropology, public policy, archaeology, art history, preservation, museum-, tourism-, and heritage studies—and from a variety of perspectives and interests—indigenous, Western, and non-Western; academic, professional and amateur; consumers and producers—to promote meaningful discussion of the complexities, competing values, and other concerns that form the environment within which these disputes exist.