Between the 1960s and 1980s, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched a number of international salvage campaigns at the behest of its member states, the most notable being the Nubian Monuments Campaign. Saving ancient monuments and discovering archaeological sites in Egypt and Sudan was viewed as a landmark in twentieth-century heritage conservation and international co-operation; it was never to be repeated again. Requests for assistance continued, yet the campaigns were configured as conservation missions rather than integrated field projects. In retrospect, this action delimited UNESCO’s goals to bridge education, science, and culture and, ultimately, impacted the potential of cross-cultural dialogue and partnerships afforded by archaeological field research. This article focuses on UNESCO’s International Campaign for the Safeguarding of Moenjodaro (1974–97) and traces the role of experts, both archaeological and hydrological, within UNESCO’s mission. It uncovers the organization’s handling of the monumental challenges and long-term effects of a multimillion-dollar salvage effort. In doing so, the article reveals the early role of prominent archaeologists Mortimer Wheeler and John Otis Brew, the ideological shift at UNESCO from archaeological research to monumentality and preservation, and the tensions that emerged as world heritage was reimagined.

Archaeological looting correlates with a number of problems, including the destruction of stratigraphic data and the damage and loss of artifacts. Looting is also understood to generate revenue, but systematic analysis of this issue is challenged by its opacity: how can we study the economic effects of archaeological looting when the practice is rarely directly observable? To address this problem, we estimate the market value of archaeological sites where artifacts have been previously excavated and documented, using a machine-learning approach. The first step uses 41,587 sales of objects from 33 firms to train an algorithm to predict the distribution channel, lot packaging, and estimated sale price of objects based on their observable characteristics. The second step uses the trained algorithm to estimate the value of sites in which a large number of artifacts have been legally excavated and documented. We make an out-of-sample prediction on two Syrian sites, Tell Bi’a and Dura Europos.

This article explores critical directions in the study of cultural heritage and, in particular, food heritage research. Its goal is to deliver insight into local perspectives produced outside mainstream heritage organizations. Strategies implemented jointly by peasant farmers of rural Peru and non-governmental organizations committed to promoting cultural resurgence show how food discloses the symbiotic relation between nature and culture in these indigenous worlds, and allows for claims grounded in social, political, and economic imaginaries. The initiatives described in this article develop within transnational networks of partners and interlocutors but outside of universalist pretensions. They constitute food heritage that differs from that of global cultural actors such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the United Nations by addressing only the needs of local communities and not complying with mechanisms that bring prestige and revenues to states and powerful cultural entrepreneurs. Globally nurtured, but locally implemented, these locally based initiatives seek out and take advantage of opportunities in strategic, proactive fashions.

The return of cultural objects lost as a result of colonial rule is a controversial issue. A common response is: “it was legal at the time” and, therefore, not a legal issue. But is that so? This article argues that it is not a lack of legal norms that explains this belated discussion but, rather, the asymmetrical application of norms. Moreover, a human rights law approach, focusing on the heritage aspect of cultural objects for people today—instead of a sole focus on property title—offers useful tools to structure this field. To illustrate these points, a case concerning an African ancestral sculpture today known as the “Bangwa Queen” will be assessed on its merits under international law. The Bangwa Queen is of spiritual importance to the Bangwa, a people indigenous to the western part of Cameroon. She was taken as part of a collection of so-called lefem figures by German colonizers in 1899 and is currently part of a French museum collection.