New: Restitution of Cultural Property and the Law

Christa Roodt, specialist in international private law and and provenance and restitution issues at the University of Glasgow, adopts a novel approach to the social question of restitution and repatriation of sacred cultural property and heritage acquired unethically during the colonial era. Her approach premises on better integration of law, ethics, history, anthropology, and provenance research.

To bridge the material and the sacred world in adjudication and policy formulation, a common definition of what the ‘sacred’ denotes in the context of colonial legacies is adopted as a viable methodology.

‘Sacred’ loot in private and public collections is defined based on clues imparted by disputes around collections such as the Parthenon Sculptures and the Zhanggong Zushi Statue cases. They offer practical approaches for deconstructing hurdles and assumptions concerning historical claims in the secondary legal norms and tenets of PrIL.