Who owns the past, who may dig it up, and who decides where it is displayed — the field's most contested ground.
9 topics · 18 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage
UNESCO · 1972
Establishes that some sites belong to the heritage of all humanity, not just the state they sit in, and creates a World Heritage List and fund to…
+6 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict
UNESCO · 1954
Written after the Second World War's destruction of monuments, it commits states to plan for the protection of cultural property before a conflict…
+10 more at this level
12 of 18 works
UNESCO
Establishes that some sites belong to the heritage of all humanity, not just the state they sit in, and creates a World Heritage List and fund to protect them jointly.
16 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Australia ICOMOS
Sets cultural significance rather than material age as the test for what about a place is worth keeping, and requires that significance be established by evidence before any conservation decision is made.
ICOMOS, ICCROM & UNESCO
Argues that authenticity cannot be judged by a single universal standard of original material, and that each culture's own criteria for judging a heritage place genuine must be respected.
UNESCO
Extends international heritage protection beyond monuments and objects to practices, rituals and oral traditions, arguing that a community's living culture needs safeguarding as much as its physical remains.
ICOM
Sets out that a museum's first obligation is to hold collections in trust for society rather than for the institution itself, and ties acquisition, display and disposal decisions to that duty.
Gabriel Moshenska
Argues that archaeology's relationship with the public is not an add-on to research but a set of theoretical and ethical questions in its own right, from illicit antiquities to community excavation.
250 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026PowerfulJRE
An archaeologist confronts claims of a lost ice-age civilisation popularised by Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse, arguing point by point that the excavated evidence supports the conventional timeline of human prehistory instead.
UNESCO
Written after the Second World War's destruction of monuments, it commits states to plan for the protection of cultural property before a conflict starts rather than after.
20 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026International Council on Monuments and Sites
Sets out the principle that a restored monument must remain legible as old and new, arguing that conjectural reconstruction destroys the historical evidence it claims to preserve.
5 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026UNESCO
Argues that looted antiquities can only be stopped at the market rather than at the site, and commits signatory states to refuse import of cultural property stolen or illegally exported from another.
12 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026ICOMOS
Sets out that archaeological heritage management must begin with protective legislation and proper resourcing before excavation, arguing that non-destructive survey should be preferred to digging wherever possible.
UNIDROIT
Establishes that a good-faith buyer of a stolen or illegally exported cultural object must still return it, shifting the legal burden in international disputes onto the market rather than the country of origin.