The challenge of how to stop the unauthorized use of Indigenous knowledge has been firmly constituted as a problem to be solved by and managed through the legal domain. In this paper, my questions are directed to the way Indigenous knowledge has been made into a category of intellectual property law and consequently how law has sought to define and manage the boundaries of Indigenous knowledge.

“Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese” was inscribed in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013, joining the company of French, Mexican, and Mediterranean “national” food traditions in the exclusive List. Although a relatively novel abstraction, washoku (literally “Japanese food”) was formally defined and recreated by a panel of government-appointed experts for inscription purposes.

This paper investigates washoku’s evolution into intangible heritage and the consequences of inscription. Analysis of field data from official meetings and primary text sources reveal that Japanese food heritage was both influenced and undermined by UNESCO’s intangible heritage system and the overriding precedent set by the “gastronomic meal of the French.” The example of washoku, though successfully inscribed, casts doubts on the feasibility of national food traditions in UNESCO’s system for intangible heritage, including their roles in promoting cultural diversity and heritage preservation.

Grave robbers, we all know, loot tombs for material gain. Recently, however, Italian tomb robbers, or tombaroli, have sought public attention by publishing their biographies and appearing on television to present an entirely new image of their métier. They depict themselves as heroes who bring the treasures of the past to the public and boast of an expertise, which remains unrecognised by official archaeologists. Rather than merely dismissing these stories as a justification, or glorification of an illegal activity, a more careful reading reveals many issues, which are of considerable importance to heritage management and archaeological research. These accounts contain a wealth of information on the identity of the people who loot tombs; their backgrounds, motivations and attempts to legitimate their actions. Moreover, they provide a unique insight into the relations between tomb robbers and the communities within which they operate. It is well known that public opinion in Italy and elsewhere to some extent sanctions illegal digging and, in my view, changing these attitudes could prove to be one of the most important steps towards a more effective policy of protecting the cultural patrimony.

For a variety of conceptual, historical, and political reasons, contemporary international law distinguishes between 'natural' land forms, cultural monuments, movable cultural property, the performing arts, and scientific knowledge. Indigenous peoples do not make these distinctions. Rather, they tend to regard landscapes as inherently cultural products in which artworks, literature, performances, and scientific-knowledge systems are inextricably embedded. Scientific knowledge must periodically be rehearsed within the landscape in recitations and performances that remember the historical process by which people and their nonhuman kinfolk constructed the landscape. Detaching specific cultural or scientific 'objects' from the landscape and commodifying them, as is contemplated by most current proposals for protecting indigenous peoples' rights, will undermine the indigenous institutions and procedures necessary for perpetuating the quality and validity of local knowledge.

The view that “cultural property internationalism” (Merryman) is represented by the Hague Convention 1954 and that it has been departed from in later UNESCO instruments can be challenged. Words which carry particular connotations can distort the argument—property is one of them, so cultural property is already a loaded term. The historical sources used to buttress the modern argument for more liberal trade in cultural objects bear other interpretations. Similarly, UNESCO's mandate has been narrowed in a way not justified by its constitution. UNESCO's later instruments, such as the 1970 Convention, do not represent an aversion to the art market, as is witnessed by its development on an international Code for Dealers. However, the art trade at present is based on the secrecy of transactions, and this has led to a number of scandals. Neither assessment of the interests at stake nor treaties on human rights or trade require tolerance of these practices.

This article analyzes how intangible cultural expressions are re-scripted as national intellectual and cultural property in postcolonial nations such as Indonesia. The mixing of intellectual and cultural property paradigms to frame folkloric art practices as national possessions, termed “intangible property nationalism,” is assessed through consideration of Indonesia's 2002 copyright law, UNESCO heritage discourse, and the tutoring of ASEAN officials to use intellectual and cultural property rhetoric to defend national cultural resources. The article considers how legal assumptions are rebuffed by Indonesian regional artists and artisans who do not view their local knowledge and practices as property subject to exclusive claims by individuals or corporate groups, including the state. Producers' limited claims on authority over cultural expressions such as music, drama, puppetry, mythology, dance, and textiles contrast with Indonesian officials' anxieties over cultural theft by foreigners, especially in Malaysia. The case suggests new nationalist uses for heritage claims in postcolonial states.

The return of 13 classical antiquities from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) to Italy provides a glimpse into a major museum's acquisition patterns from 1971 to 1999. Evidence emerging during the trial of Marion True and Robert E. Hecht Jr. in Rome is allowing the Italian authorities to identify antiquities that have been removed from their archaeological contexts by illicit digging. Key dealers and galleries are identified, and with them other objects that have followed the same route. The fabrication of old collections to hide the recent surfacing of antiquities is also explored.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The authors are grateful to the following for their assistance during the writing of this paper: Malcolm Bell, Ann Copeland (La Trobe University), Tracey Cullen, Colin Hope (Monash University), Andrew Jamieson (University of Melbourne), Ian MacPhee (La Trobe University), Jessica Powers (San Antonio Museum of Art), Sonia Puttock (University of Queensland), Peter Watson, and Karol Wight (The J. Paul Getty Museum).

During 2006 three major North American Museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, agreed to return a significant number of antiquities to Italy. Acquisition information relating to the return of 26 items to Italy and 4 to Greece from the Getty can be added to the details known from the objects returned from Boston. A more detailed picture is emerging of how antiquities, apparently looted from Italy, were being passed through Switzerland on their way to dealers in Europe and North America. This information also points toward other antiquities that may be included in future agreements.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The authors are grateful to Karol Wight of the J. Paul Getty Museum for her willingness to check details about various pieces in Malibu. They are also grateful to Neil Brodie, Morag Kersel, and Peter Watson for comments on an earlier draft. Cass Cliatt (Princeton University), Jordan Rundgren (public relations manager, Toledo Museum of Art), and Lynette Nyman (press and public relations manager, Minneapolis Institute of Arts) kindly provided press releases relating to objects in their collections. Keith Padgham kindly assisted with checking some references.

Michael Brown famously asked ‘Who owns native culture?’ This paper revisits that question by analyzing what happens to culture when the culturally defined boundary between it and nature becomes salient in the context of disputes between indigenous and settler populations. My case study is the dispute between the New Zealand government and Maori tribal groupings concerning ownership of the foreshore and seabed. Having been granted the right to test their claims in court in 2003, Maori groups were enraged when the government legislated the right out of existence in 2004. Though the reasons for doing so were clearly political, contrasting cultural assumptions appeared to set Maori and Pakeha (New Zealanders of European origin) at odds. While couching ownership of part of nature as an IPR issue may seem counter-intuitive, I argue that as soon as a property claim destabilizes the nature/culture boundary, IPR discourse becomes pertinent.

The articles collected in this special issue aim at addressing the debate about the protection and use of cultural heritage in the Pacific within the context of globalization. Contributions aim specifically at analyzing the tension that exists between, on the one hand, political, legal and economic discourses of Pacific peoples who wish to retain control and who seek protection of the use of their cultural heritage, and, on the other hand, the view of others arguing that it is in the interest of the general public to lift as many embargos as possible in order to stimulate research and to increase economic growth. All authors approach the subject of cultural and intellectual property rights as a discourse, with specific attention for the concepts of property and ownership, particularly in relation to cultural heritage and cultural knowledge; the potential benefits of property; appropriate protection mechanisms; the complexities of the discourses about rights, especially property rights; the appropriation of property or its misappropriation, often associated with what is freely available in the public domain; and, finally, the use of intellectual property as either a form of enclosure or as a form of ethnic boundary.

Cultural property activists have worried about the bioprospecting, or even biopiracy, of kava (Piper methysticum), a plant exchanged and consumed for many Pacific social and ritual purposes. By the 1990s, kava and concoctions made from the plant's component kavalactones were increasingly popular products within global markets for recreational and medicinal drugs. Starting in 2002, however, a number of European countries among others banned kava imports after initial reports that some heavy users suffered liver damage. This has complicated the kava story as producer efforts shifted from protecting rights to the plant to reopening blocked export markets. The difficulty is to both push kava into global markets while protecting local rights to the plant. A promising strategy may be developing consumer awareness of geographic indicators and “noble” kava varieties that Vanuatu's local producers may control yet globally market as “the best in the world.”

According to the logic of the conservation ethics, the heritage sector has the duty to conserve cultural heritage because it has inherent value and constitutes a non-renewable resource that once destroyed cannot be substituted and, therefore, must be preserved for the benefit of future generations. In this article, I argue, however, that the cultural heritage of the past is not a comprehensive legacy that theoretically, at any point, might have been considered complete but, rather, that it can be understood as frequently updated manifestations of changing perceptions of the past over time. The most important question for conservation and heritage management, thus, is not how much heritage of any one period may or may not survive intact into the future but, instead, which heritage, as our legacy to the generations to come, will benefit future societies the most. In particular, I am calling for more research into the possible significance of heritage in addressing some of the social consequences of climate change.

Archaeological looting correlates with a number of problems, including the destruction of stratigraphic data and the damage and loss of artifacts. Looting is also understood to generate revenue, but systematic analysis of this issue is challenged by its opacity: how can we study the economic effects of archaeological looting when the practice is rarely directly observable? To address this problem, we estimate the market value of archaeological sites where artifacts have been previously excavated and documented, using a machine-learning approach. The first step uses 41,587 sales of objects from 33 firms to train an algorithm to predict the distribution channel, lot packaging, and estimated sale price of objects based on their observable characteristics. The second step uses the trained algorithm to estimate the value of sites in which a large number of artifacts have been legally excavated and documented. We make an out-of-sample prediction on two Syrian sites, Tell Bi’a and Dura Europos.

Of the two values of ancient objects, the connoisseur's first concern is with the object today, and the archaeologist's is with its past place and the knowledge it offers about the past. Central to both is provenance, which comprises the 'archaeology' of the item - its story until it went to rest in the ground - and its 'history' - its story once found and brought to human awareness again. Our response to looting of antiquities depends on how serious is the impact on knowledge, so we need a 'quantitative history' of collecting - how much there was to start with, how much has been dug up, how much we know about it, how much remains. Four quantitative histories are reported: on Cycladic figures, on items in recent celebrated classical collections, on antiquities sold at auction in recent decades, and on classical collecting at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. These pioneering studies are not yet enough to make a clear overall picture; our preliminary conclusion is a glum view of the damage caused by the illicit pursuit of antiquities.

This paper is about the recent discussions (known as Denkmalpflegediskussion) on the principles and practices of state heritage management in Germany. In an expert report commissioned by the prominent German politician Antje Vollmer from Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, a number of fundamental criticisms were made. They concern existing practices of state heritage management, some of which are said to alienate and patronize people. One of the main issues discussed is therefore whether the management of the cultural heritage should be further decentralized (‘entstaatlicht’) and made the responsibility of individual citizens and other stake-holders. The overriding criterion for scheduling should be a site's ability to move people aesthetically and emotionally, rather than some complex academic reasoning about historical significance. The significance of beauty and feelings to heritage is illustrated by discussing a citizens' initiative promoting comprehensive reconstructions in the Dresden Neumarkt area, around the recently restored Frauenkirche. This paper seeks to review some of the key issues of the German debate and begin a discussion of how it might relate to states heritage management in other countries for which Sweden serves as an example. The question asked is to what extent heritage management elsewhere too can, and should, be further democratized.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I am grateful to Riksantikvarieämbetets FoU programme for supporting the research on which this paper is based, Gottfried Kerscher for sending me his defunct webpages, Matthias Donath for several valuable suggestions concerning the debate in Germany, Stefan Hertzig for his readiness to answer questions about the Gesellschaft Historischer Neumarkt Dresden, and to Bodil Petersson for comments on a shorter text about the same topic published in Sweden (Holtorf 2006). For help with the images I am obliged to Stefan Hertzig and Matthias Donath. I would also like to thank two referees for their constructive suggestions and encouragement and Alexander Bauer for a very quick turnaround.

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.

How do archaeologists, governments, law enforcement, and a local non-governmental organization react to a hole in the ground—a hole that is the direct result of archaeological site looting? Whatever the response, the aim is the same: the protection of Jordanian cultural heritage through a curtailing of archaeological looting. New to the standard suite of responses are unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs). A comprehensive approach to the landscape, which includes UAV flyovers, ground truthing, oral interviews, collaborative efforts with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and local cultural heritage organizations, is essential to safeguarding and documenting what remains of a series of Early Bronze Age sites (3600–2000 bc) along the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan. This is an examination of the (w)hole picture—individual and institutional responses to looters’ holes—diverse reactions with the common goal of preserving and protecting Jordanian cultural heritage.

Large-scale resource extraction projects often create obstacles for the protection, maintenance, and inheritance of indigenous cultural heritage. In this article we detail some of the challenges and opportunities arising from our collaborative partnership with the community of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea, which is seeking to establish, inform, and resource a formal cultural heritage management program in the context of a large-scale gold-mining operation. The general approach to this collaborative venture involves the application of a specific development tool, the Stepping Stones for Cultural Heritage program. This consultative process is innovative in both Melanesia and the context of resource extraction, but also more generally within the field of cultural heritage. We describe the outcomes of this process and some of the initial pilot projects, one of which was based on the recording of traditional Lihirian songs. We also argue that while the mine places greater pressure upon Lihirian cultural heritage, it also presents Lihirians with the opportunity to realize a vision of their cultural future that is beyond the reach of many other indigenous communities.

A consideration of the U.S. initiatives in response to the loss of cultural property in Latin America and Canada, as seen by a participant in their formulation and implementation from 1969 to 1994; cultural and aesthetic viewpoints are seen to divide the cultural property constituencies, although the former is prevailing. The significance of the U.S. UNESCO cultural property implementing legislation for five requesting countries and for Mexico is discussed, with a final recommendation for its emendation so as to allow the United States to respond immediately to the requests of all parties to the convention.