This panel aims to address how institutions and private individuals may or may not, through and alongside public law and democracy, mediate, neutralize and potentially resolve the identity struggles and security threats which occur at cultural heritage sites. Identity struggles and accompanying security issues surrounding cultural heritage are present in history and in our contemporary...
‘Nationalism‘ versus Identity Pluralism? The Preservation, Management and Valorisation of Archaeological Heritage
This paper will analyse the key role played by the State in the preservation, management and valorisation of archaeological heritage in Italy. First, it will reconstruct the main points of the debate raging in Parliament and academia after the unification of Italy over how to control the loss of archaeological objects. It will show how...
To File the World: the Archive as Cultural Heritage and the Power of Remembering
This paper analyses the historic archive as a tool for the preservation of memory. Beyond the idea of the archive as a fixed and immovable space, the paper wishes to consider the archive in its dynamism, chronological evolution, and in its changing relations with both the State and the private individual. Starting from a historical...
A Case Study of the Carabinieri Force for the Protection of Cultural Heritage
In 1969 Italy became the first nation to found a special police force unit, the Carabinieri Force for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, dedicated to combatting the theft and illegal excavation of archaeological sites, the trafficking and counterfeiting of stolen goods, including cultural property, and to ensuring the confiscation of stolen or illegally exported cultural...
Cultural Institutions versus Cultural Policies? Accommodating National Cultural Priorities within the International Treaty Framework protecting to Cultural Property
The increasing illicit trade in cultural property is a global problem in need of a global response. Accession to the international treaty system designed to tackle this trade and protect heritage more broadly has, however, been slow among many States, some of whom nevertheless regard cultural heritage as an important defining characteristic of their nationhood...