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Looted Cultural Objects, Elena Baylis Jan 2024

Looted Cultural Objects, Elena Baylis

Articles

In the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, museums are in possession of cultural objects that were unethically taken from their countries and communities of origin under the auspices of colonialism. For many years, the art world considered such holdings unexceptional. Now, a longstanding movement to decolonize museums is gaining momentum, and some museums are reconsidering their collections. Presently, whether to return such looted foreign cultural objects is typically a voluntary choice for individual museums to make, not a legal obligation. Modern treaties and statutes protecting cultural property apply only prospectively, to items stolen or illegally exported after their effective dates. …


The Uses Of Maya Structures: A Study Of Architecture And Artifact Distribution At Sepulturas, Copan, Honduras, Julia A. Hendon Oct 1987

The Uses Of Maya Structures: A Study Of Architecture And Artifact Distribution At Sepulturas, Copan, Honduras, Julia A. Hendon

Anthropology Faculty Publications

This dissertation presents a compositional analysis of the architecture and a distributional analysis of the associated artifacts resulting from excavation of some ninety buildings dating from the Late to Terminal Classic Period at the Maya site of Copan, Honduras. The study of all artifacts recovered from primary contexts, both in situ and redeposited, focuses first on a determination of their function, second on an analysis of their distribution within the site, and third on their associations with one another in order to identify the kinds of activities carried out at various locations. A second line of evidence used is the …