Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership by Colin Renfrew
In this account, Colin Renfrew illustrates how the most precious product of archaeology is the information that controlled and well-published excavations can give us about our shared human past. Clandestine and unpublished digging of archaeological sites for gain - ie looting - destroys the context and all hope of providing such information. It is the source of most of the antiquities that appear on the art market today - unprovenanced antiquities, the product of illicit traffic financed, knowingly or not by the collectors and museums that buy them on a no-questions-asked basis. This trade has turned London as well as other international centres into a 'thieves kitchen' where greed triumphs over serious appreciation of the past. Unless a solution is found to this ethical crisis in archaeology, our record of the past will be vastly diminished. This book attempts to lay bare the misunderstanding and hypocrisy that underlies that crisis.
Colin Renfrew was formerly Disney Professor of Archaeology and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeology, University of cambridge, UK, where he is now Senior Fellow. His publications include Figuring It Out: Parallel Visions of Artists and Archaeologists (2003); Excavations at Phylakopi in Melos, 1974-77, and Prehistory: the Making of the Human Mind (both 2007).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780715630341 |
| ISBN 10 | 0715630342 |
| Title | Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership |
| Author | Colin Renfrew |
| Series | Debates In Archaeology |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 2000-10-20 |
| Number of pages | 160 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |