Of the two values of ancient objects, the connoisseur's first concern is with the object today, and the archaeologist's is with its past place and the knowledge it offers about the past. Central to both is provenance, which comprises the 'archaeology' of the item - its story until it went to rest in the ground - and its 'history' - its story once found and brought to human awareness again. Our response to looting of antiquities depends on how serious is the impact on knowledge, so we need a 'quantitative history' of collecting - how much there was to start with, how much has been dug up, how much we know about it, how much remains. Four quantitative histories are reported: on Cycladic figures, on items in recent celebrated classical collections, on antiquities sold at auction in recent decades, and on classical collecting at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. These pioneering studies are not yet enough to make a clear overall picture; our preliminary conclusion is a glum view of the damage caused by the illicit pursuit of antiquities.

This article examines the issues surrounding the appropriation of indigenous culture, in particular art. It discusses the nature and context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in Australia in order to establish why appropriation and reproduction are important issues. The article outlines some of the ways in which the Australian legal system has attempted to address the problem and looks at the recent introduction of the Label of Authenticity. At the same time, the article places these issues in the context of indigenous self-determination and examines the problematic use of such concepts as “authenticity.” Finally, the article looks beyond the Label of Authenticity and existing law of intellectual and cultural property, to sketch another possible solution to the problem.

In May of 1954, the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (Hague Convention) was adopted in an attempt to curb the destruction of movable and immovable cultural property during war. Recent conflicts, such as the continuing war in the Balkans, remind us that the Hague Convention is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago. Although this Convention is the most comprehensive and internationally recognized treaty to protect cultural property in time of war, the United States remains one of the few signatories that has yet to ratify it. In January 1999, former President William J. Clinton forwarded the Hague Convention to the Senate with the recommendation that it ratify the Convention and part of Protocol I. Although this presented perhaps the first real opportunity in nearly half a century for the United States to join one hundred countries and ratify the Hague Convention, its fate remains uncertain. Generally oriented towards the United States' policy and practice, this article broadly discusses the Hague Convention, its history, its weaknesses and strengths, and the current status of U.S. ratification.

This article examines the rationale for restricting the international artistic patrimony. The meaning of national patrimony is analysed, and rationales for state funding and interventions in the art market are analysed in light of the nonprivate benefits that this category of art produces. Distributional concerns about the international movement of art are considered. The second part of the article provides a taxonomy of restrictions used to prevent art objects leaving a nation, namely export restrictions, import regulations, and tax policies and incentives.

The Elgin Marbles continue to be one of the more controversial issues of the contemporary debate over cultural property and questions of its moral ownership. Unfortunately but perhaps inevitably, the pace of discussion is often driven by emotion. In this highly charged atmosphere, misunderstandings and misrepresentations are so often repeated that they gain a reality of their own and are very rarely challenged.

Recently the corpus of disinformation was given sustenance from a new quarter. In two separate publications, one of them in this journal, William St. Clair launched an attack on the British Museum and its care of the Parthenon sculptures. As this work is now likely to enter the core bibliography of the Parthenon sculptures, I am grateful to the editors of IJCP for this opportunity to correct some of its many misrepresentations and errors of fact.