Significant documents of record recently produced and dealing with cultural property, heritage and related issues will be printed annually in the final issue (No. 4) of each numbered volume. Documents considered for publication may be national, regional, or international instruments and codes. Inquiries or suggestions regarding documentary materials may be addressed to the Chronicles Editor, Kurt Siehr, at ⟨[email protected]⟩ or the Editor, Alexander Bauer, at ⟨[email protected]⟩.

As a result of the development of the sciences of conservation of cultural heritage, the new concept of Cultural Routes shows the evolution of ideas with respect to the vision of cultural properties, as well as the growing importance of values related to their setting and territorial scale, and reveals the macrostructure of heritage on different levels. This concept introduces a model for a new ethics of conservation that considers these values as a common heritage that goes beyond national borders, and which requires joint efforts. By respecting the intrinsic value of each individual element, the Cultural Route recognizes and emphasizes the value of all of its elements as substantive parts of a whole. It also helps to illustrate the contemporary social conception of cultural heritage values as a resource for sustainable social and economic development.

Meeting in the historic city of Québec (Canada), from 29 September to 4 October 2008, at the invitation of ICOMOS Canada, on the occasion of the 16th General Assembly of ICOMOS and the celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of the founding of Québec, the participants adopt the following Declaration of principles and recommendations to preserve the spirit of place through the safeguarding of tangible and intangible heritage, which is regarded as an innovative and efficient manner of ensuring sustainable and social development throughout the world.

The purpose of the Association of Art Museum Directors is to support its members in increasing the contribution of art museums to society. The AAMD accomplishes this mission by establishing and maintaining the highest standards of professional practice; serving as a forum for the exchange of information and ideas to aid its members in their professional roles as art museum directors; acting as an advocate for art museums; and being a leader in shaping public discourse about the arts community and the role of art in society.

To promote public trust and accountability for U.S. museums, AAM offers the following standards to guide the operations of museums that own or acquire archaeological material and ancient art originating outside the United States.

The Karanga Aotearoa Repatriation Programme at Te Papa was established in July 2003. It is mandated by the New Zealand government and supported by iwi (Mäori and Moriori tribal groups) indigenous to New Zealand.

The Institute for Archaeological Studies of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, organized a conference on legal issues concerning archaeology and theft of antiquities. This meeting was stimulated by the German statute (Kulturgüterrückgabegesetz version of May 18, 2007) implementing the UNESCO convention of November 14, 1970, the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Archaeologists are afraid that the new legal regime might encourage thieves and art dealers to localize their activities in Germany. Michael Müller-Karpe of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz, Germany, articulated these fears. Five reports on tomb robbery in Africa (Peter Breunig), Europe (Rüdiger Krause), Mediterranean countries (Hans-Markus von Kaenel, Wulf Raeck), and the Near East (Jan-Waalke Meyer) gave a bleak picture of contemporary dangers to archaeological sites and archaeological objects. Kurt Siehr gave the paper, “Legal Aspects of the Protection of Cultural Property,” stressing that the ratification and implementation of the 1970 UNESCO convention will improve the protection of cultural property in Germany. However, he also emphasized that the implementing statute could have provided stronger measures: Germany should ratify the UNIDROIT Convention of June 24, 1995, on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects as already urged by most German archaeologists and museums.

On June 1, 2005, the Swiss Cultural Property Transfer Act (CPTA) of 2003 entered into force. This statute implements for Switzerland the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. According to article 7 of the CPTA—along the line followed by the United States in their implementation statute—bilateral agreements must be stipulated with contracting states of the convention so these states will be protected in Switzerland with respect to the items mentioned in these agreements. Yves Fischer and Benno Widmer of the Federal Office for Culture explained the CPTA and the Ordinance on Cultural Property Transfer (CPTO) and mentioned that with Peru and Greece agreements have already been achieved and that agreements with Italy, Egypt, and Mexico are in preparation. Marc-André Renold, director of the Geneva-based Institute of Art and Law, presided the session when question were put to the Federal Office at the end of the conference.

The Committee on Cultural Heritage Law of the International Law Association (ILA) held an interim meeting in London on May 17–18, 2007. After completing the work on the Principles for Cooperation in the Mutual Protection and Transfer of Cultural Material on the occasion of the Seventy-Second Conference in Toronto 2006, the committee has now two projects on its agenda. The first one is concerned with a study of the concept of safe havens for temporary deposit of cultural material rescued from circumstances of armed conflict and other serious threats; the second study deals with the relationship between international trade law and cultural heritage law.

Under the auspices of Kurt Siehr (Hamburg, Zürich) the 9th International Seminar on “Art & Law” took place from July 6–9, 2007, in Basel, Switzerland. Originally conceived as a platform for doctorate candidates in Europe and over the last years enlarged to a platform for comprehensive discussions between lawyers as well as art historians, academics as well as practitioners, this year's seminar in Basel focused on three main issues: protection of cultural property, problems of stolen works of art (both including their international and European legal frame), and copyright protection.

July 12–13, 2007, the Institute of Art and Law, Leicester, invited numerous experts to an international meeting at Pecz, Hungary, about the legal and ethical issues of portable antiquities in Europe. Norman Palmer (Barrister, King's College, London) introduced the participants to the questions revolving around treasure trove and the various ways to legally structure claims for recovery of portable antiquities under both public and private law. In particular, he addressed the issue of interdependencies between potentially strong substantive law on treasure trove or protection of cultural property on the one hand and limits of implementation of such rules in cross-border cases on the other hand. Jeremy Scott (Withers LLP, London) further illustrated this issue with reference to the most recent English cases of Iran v. Berend—no renvoi in English choice of law on moveable property and (if there were renvoi) no lex originis under French choice of law—and Iran v. Barakat—no application of foreign public law such as Iranian patrimony law by English courts. In the meantime the latter case has been reversed on appeal. Kurt Siehr (Max-Planck-Institute for Private International and Foreign Law, Hamburg) outlined the mechanisms offered by community law, in particular under Directive 93/7/EEC, for the protection of cultural property of member states vis-à-vis other member states. Zsolt Visy (Pecz University) demonstrated the typical difficulties of the protection of archaeological objects found in the ground but illegally exported with reference to the highly problematic history of the Sevso Treasure. Visy also underlined the fact that most legal remedies depend on the precise attribution of the moveable object in question to a certain state. In the following a tour de raison was offered through various national legal systems on how treasure trove is regulated and to what extent claims for recovery of antiquities can be raised. Weller pointed to the peculiarity under German law that the rules on treasure trove are rather unsophisticated compared to the voluminous statutory regimes in other states and that the competency to rule on treasure trove primarily lies with the states of the Federal Republic of Germany—a situation that necessarily results in a variety of solutions. Although many rules of general nature supplement the regime of treasure trove under German law, the law on treasure trove appeared to be a suitable object for unification on the federal level, and on this occasion the protection of archaeological objects found in the ground should be strengthened. In the second part of the meeting, Guido Carducci (UNESCO, Paris) presented a comparison between the regimes of claims for recovery of antiquities under the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention. Patty Gerstenblith (DePaul University, United States) commented on the interaction between foreign patrimony law and domestic criminal prosecution under the National Stolen Property Act with reference to the famous case in US v. Schultz. In the following round table talk with Kurt Siehr, Jeremy Scott, and Weller, the crucial issue of the application of foreign public law such as patrimony law was discussed from a comparative perspective; and Weller drew the attention to the 1975 Wiesbaden Resolution on the Application of Foreign Public Law of the Institute of International Law, by which the world leading conflicts scholars of the time had already agreed on the principle that there was no good reason a priori to exclude foreign public law from its application by a domestic court. Further presentations on the relevance of soft law, codes of ethics, and practical issues of archaeological excavations provided a comprehensive picture of the legal and ethical issues of portable antiquities in Europe.

On September 8, 2007, the Heidelberg Institut für Kunst und Recht (IFKUR, Institute of Art and Law) hosted guests interested in art and law from all over Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. More than 100 participants attended the institute's First Heidelberg Day of Art Law on “The Artist's Law—The Art of Law (Des Künstlers Rechte—Die Kunst des Rechts).” The conference was held in the Heidelberg Town Hall's ballroom. The first part of the day was dedicated to various legal aspects of the freedom of art, and the second part was devoted to legal challenges concerning the exploitation of artistic works.

The Austrian Federal Ministry of Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur in Vienna offered the perfect frame for the symposium “Rechtsfragen der Restitution von Kulturgut” on October 12, 2007. Under the direction of Gerte Reichelt, member of the Institut für Kunst und Recht (IFKUR) advisory board, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Europarecht dedicated this day for the UNESCO convention in 1970 and the UNIDROIT convention in 1995.

This symposium on provenance research and the restitution of Nazi-looted art was organized by the auction house Sotheby's and sponsored by the Muggenthaler International Genealogical Research Institute. After prior meetings hosted by Sotheby's on the same topic in London and Vienna, some 90 provenance researchers, art historians, government representatives, lawyers, and academics met in Amsterdam to discuss the Dutch restitution regime in particular and, in general, the progress made since the passing of the Washington Principles on Nazi-looted art in December 1998.

UNESCO launched the United Nations (UN) International Year of Languages on February 21, 2008, International Mother Language Day, with an information workshop entitled “Standard-setting Instruments Promoting Multilingualism.” UNESCO is the lead agency for carrying out activities related to the international year in view of its extensive work in the area of promoting multilingualism (in education and cyberspace, for example), safeguarding endangered languages, and supporting indigenous languages linked with traditional ecological knowledge and environmental sustainability. The international year is accompanied by the slogan “languages matter!” and this reflects the wider context within which it and its related activities have been conceived.

The Musée du Quay Branly held an international symposium, “From Anatomic Collections to Objects of Worship: Conservation and Exhibition of Human Remains in Museums,” in Paris on February 22–23, 2008, at the museum's Théatre Claude Levy Strauss. The main purpose of the 2-day conference—opened by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication's Christine Albanel—was to stimulate an international debate on a multidisciplinary basis concerning the roles and responsibilities of museums in the exhibition and repatriation of human remains. The subject turned out to be topical, originating from the case of the toi moko, the Maori tattooed head belonging to the collection of the Natural History Museum in Rouen, France, since 1875. The restitution of the toi moko to the Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand, deliberated by the city of Rouen, was recently banned by the Administrative Tribunal of Rouen, on request of the Ministry of Culture at the end of 2007. The head actually belonged to a municipal museum, which was in fact part of the Musées de France, and therefore it was considered part of a public collection. Accordingly, the 2002 French statute providing for the inalienability of state properties was applicable.

The Fourth Annual Ename International Colloquium, entitled “Between Objects and Ideas: Rethinking the Role of Intangible Heritage,” was held in Ghent, Belgium, March 26–28, 2008. Focusing on the intellectual and practical relationship between tangible and intangible heritage and its implications for the shaping of international heritage policy, it featured 40 speakers representing universities, museums, universities, and heritage organizations in Belgium, Canada, China, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Thailand, Turkey, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As in previous years, the colloquium was organized by the Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation, with support from the Province of East Flanders.

The 16th General Assembly of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) was held in Quebec, Canada, from September 29 to October 4, 2008. The events included the scientific, advisory, and executive committee meetings; Young Professional's Forum; a Scientific Symposium; and the General Assembly meeting including elections for the new executive committee. According to the ICOMOS official report, 853 participants from 77 different countries attended the event.