History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Dulce Sueños De Tierra, Sweet Dreams Of Earth, Jordany Genao

Theses and Dissertations

Jordany's paper congregates their archival research into an art practice that examines the decolonial impulse to excavate the self and produce autonomy. Using ceramics to reference and re-animate Taino ritual objects found in museums, resulting in alternative museology, their work seeks to honor Caribbean ancestors by subverting colonial history.

Skin Echoes, Andreia Santana

Theses and Dissertations

Santana’s explores the intersection of biology and identity, incorporating living matter and performative gestures into installations to reflect on social constructs of history and gender. By observing water and its qualities of defying Western dichotomies, Skin Echoes focuses on the material interchanges across bodies and the wider material world.

Challenges Of Repatriation: Asante Artifacts At The American Museum Of Natural History, Abdul-Alim Farook

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Inspired by calls for the repatriation of famous artifacts like the Benin Bronzes and the Elgin Marbles, for this capstone project, I have analyzed and catalogued 250 sampled Asante artifacts at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Through this analysis, I discuss the many ways museums in North America acquired their collections. By doing so, I explore the difficulties that arise in debates surrounding repatriation due to the manner in which these artifacts were acquired. I argue that due to the many different types of donors of the Asante artifacts to the American Museum of Natural History, the Asante …

Lords From The Desert, Caroline Mercado

Capstones

Lords from the Desert

This work explores a reality that is little talked about: how the most prestigious pre-Columbian art exhibits in the United States hide a murky origin. From looting of temples to illicit art trafficking, to smuggling and collectors’ affairs, the pieces gain value in proportion to the social prestige of their owner. Along the way, the most important is lost: research that provides context and allows us to know history. The First World wins a seductive, but simplistic story. The Third World, from which all these cultures emerge, loses patrimony and possibilities of understanding themselves. A pair …

Some Observations And New Discoveries Related To Altar 3, Pacbitun, Belize, Sheldon Skaggs, Christophe Helmke, Jon Spenard, Paul F. Healy, Terry G. Powis

Publications and Research

The Pre-Columbian Maya city of Pacbitun, Belize (Fig. 1) is distinguished by the high number of stone monuments (n- 20) identified during the roughly three decades of archaeological research conducted there (Healy et al. 2004:213). Altar 3, recovered in a cache within the main pyramidal structure of the site in 1986, was one of those monuments, but, unlike most of the others from the site, it is carved and bas a short hieroglyphic text. Yet, similar to several of the others, it had been broken in the past and, its pieces scattered. Archaeological excavations in 2016 recovered another piece of …

Saudi Aramco And The Politics Of Cultural Heritage, Anahid Hanounik Huth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Culture Heritage in recent decades has become a catch word within world discourse. It is increasingly receiving generous attention in both money and time form private and public sectors on preservation policy. The application of so-called preservation and restoration projects, the alleged care for Cultural Heritage, has become a motive and battle cry of UNESCO, World Bank, private companies, banks, NGOs, European Council, and Western governments' foreign policy. This leads us to ask what is behind this increasing attention, and whether we should see it as Christina Luke 2013 suggested in her article--is Heritage increasingly being seen as a soft …