Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the discipline of law and in particular cultural property law serves as a third dialogical space where and the theoretical and practical consequences that flow from this interaction for all three disciplines.

Paper long abstract:

Legal research regarding cultural property focuses on its illicit trafficking which fuels its flow from source to market states and ultimately generates demands repatriation typically by successor states and indigenous peoples. While the response to these demands for repatriation by the international legal community lag behind, many individual states have developed detailed and complex domestic laws for the repatriation of cultural property typically for the benefit of their indigenous populations. To achieve the ends of repatriation, these law require evidence of a relationship between the disputed piece of cultural property and the indigenous group asserting a claim for repatriation. Ultimately, it is here in providing evidence of this relationship that both archaeologists and anthropologists play a key role in determining the fate of these repatriation claims.

In turn, this presentation seeks to explore further how this space within the discipline of the law and more specially within the area of cultural property law provides a third space where archeology and anthropology can meet. Moreover, after exploring how these disciplines meet within this legal context, the remainder of the presentation will focus on theoretical and practical consequences that flow from this interaction for all three disciplines.