Listening to Pete Brown talk, you learn that controversies in museums aren’t just about who owns what. The way in which treasures are presented is becoming an increasing source of conflict; both among museum staff and members of the public.
Highlighted Quote:
“What people had the most problem with was the museum saying: We don’t know. And we can’t really blame them, because museums have set themselves up as institutions that KNOW.”
Submitted by Jon Himoff on Tue, 11/24/2009 - 14:01
The big Museums have the greatest advantage when it comes to the artefacts that the UNESCO heritage sites and others want back -- the big Museums have possession. Further, the Museums typically reside in the countries that made the laws governing repatriation. But as cultural tourism continues to be a growing and massive business, the UNESCO sites are making their own big Museums and are able to hire their own lawyers to defend their interests (check Zahi Hawass' Most Wanted List). The complex battle for who controls artefacts is really heating-up now. Perhaps the issue of who owns antiquity is possibly less urgent than who controls it.
Submitted by veigapaula on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 22:13
Spending time at the KNH Centre, Manchester, UK, studying Biomedical and Forensic Techniques for Egyptology with Professor Rosalie David, gave me a different perspective on how and why we should care for ancient human remains. Besides the usual curiosity people have everywhere for ‘mummies’ and the fascination for Egyptian tombs and mysteries, there is a real aspect to what they can give us in return.
A brief deconstruction: from the time of death of a human to the finding of human remains, all forensic techniques apply, but common sense has recently turned into professional behaviour and techniques, allied to ethics when dealing with human bodies.
Highlighted Quote:
We can conclude that ethics and technology may go hand in hand to achieve a perfect preservation of our past, both as cultural artefacts remaining from vanished important cultures but also as a reliable source of information for human evolution, and the evolution of diseases.
Listening to Pete Brown talk, you learn that controversies in museums aren’t just about who owns what. The way in which treasures are presented is becoming an increasing source of conflict; both among museum staff and members of the public.
Spending time at the KNH Centre, Manchester, UK, studying Biomedical and Forensic Techniques for Egyptology with Professor Rosalie David, gave me a different perspective on how and why we should care for ancient human remains. Besides the usual curiosity people have everywhere for ‘mummies’ and the fascination for Egyptian tombs and mysteries, there is a real aspect to what they can give us in return.
