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Paper short abstract:

With the requests for the restitution of artifacts collected during the sub-Saharan colonization, a multidisciplinary approach of provenance research is suitable, and must resort to law history to detail the object’s journey and the legal acts that occurred.

Paper long abstract:

Nowadays, a contemporary conflict appears related to the restitution of movable items collected during the sub-Saharan colonization. Therefore, it is essential to document scientifically the itineraries of the concerned objects: this is the goal of provenance research.

During western colonization, we can observe excessive collections of goods realized by Western actors on natives, while colonial law was silent. Indeed, the law(s) applied in colonies gave little importance to movable property, unlike land law which was essential in a colonial context. Consequently, the frequent local administrative settlement of conflicts occurred at the detriment of disputes treated by courts.

With contemporary restitution, are we witnessing the creation of a right of peoples to dispose of their patrimonial heritage? Or is it a question of state strategies aimed at developing a national narrative crystallized in objects?

Provenance research must be multidisciplinary, and it benefits from the recourse to law instruments. In Art History, cartels present what could be assimilated to an “identity card” focusing only on the object. Using law instruments, the provenance introduces the various legal acts of transfer of possession or ownership that have affected the object from its appropriation in situ to its subsequent journey. Such an approach seeks to establish what can be assimilated to an objects’ "passport".

Only in this way the returned object would be turned back entirely, and its return to the territory where it was born would only constitute the umpteenth stage of its journey, an additional stamp on its “passport”.