Against cultural property

John Carman’s book Against cultural property (2005), is an important statement on the vexed question of heritage ownership. Previous titles in the Duckworth Debates in Archaeology series include Colin Renfrew’s polemic on the antiquities trade, Loot, legitimacy and ownership (2000), and Robin Skeates’ discussion of the heritage process, Debating the archaeological heritage (2002). Whereas these authors looked mainly at the practical application of heritage policy, Carman is more concerned with the social and theoretical issues that underpin the various types of heritage ownership.

Carman identifies four main ‘property regimes’ applied to the archaeological heritage – private property, state property, common property and open access. Each of these entail certain rights and duties, and reflect the different values attributed to the material. He considers the organisational, legal and structural institutions which have been established to manage heritage ownership, noting that heritage is valued according to criteria outside the field of archaeology, more influenced by the disciplines of accountancy, economics and anthropology. What he calls a blithe acceptance of the concept of cultural property by the archaeological community “has caused us to disempower ourselves in relation to others with an interest in managing and controlling cultural objects”.

The book is largely concerned with revealing how conventional property regimes (private and state) are inappropriate when applied to archaeological material. This involves giving a detailed introduction to the rights and duties that flow from different forms of ownership, as well as considering the multiple values ascribed to material remains of the past. The final two chapters address ideas about heritage as communal property and heritage as a non-property resource, with the tone of the book changing from “the language of is – an attempted description of the world as it appears to be – to the language of ought – the delineation of possibilities not yet apparent”.

This book makes a significant contribution to a complex and controversial debate. By providing a solid bedrock of economic theory, Carman is able to challenge some of the assumptions made about entitlement to and ownership of cultural heritage, and to propose alternatives to the current orthodoxy of commercial value. Although the alternative models he offers are far from being fully developed, they raise the possibility of a genuine shift away from the deficiencies and compromises of the cultural property concept.