scholarly journals Analysis of Middle Nubian Vessel-forming Technology Using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI)

2020 ◽  
Vol XII (1) ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Aaron de Souza ◽  
◽  
Martina Trognitz ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Structural Examination ◽  
Photographic Technique ◽  
Forming Technology ◽  
Ceramic Vessel ◽  
Reflectance Transformation Imaging

Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is a photographic technique used to generate digital surrogates of surfaces that can be viewed using virtual lighting coming from interactively set directions, enabling the close structural examination of objects under digital raking light. In this study, RTI was applied to Middle Nubian pottery from sites near the Second Nile Cataract that were excavated by the Scandinavian Joint Expedition to Sudanese Nubia in the early 1960s. The ceramic traditions under investigation are currently known as C-Group, Pan-Grave and Kerma. An overarching aim of the project is to assess the possibility of understanding the relationships between these groups through detailed analyses of their material traditions. Based on the hypothesis that technological traditions may be related to cultural heritage, RTI is applied in this study to observe morphological traces of ceramic vessel forming processes. Two technological groups were identified, one consistent with paddle-forming, and another consistent with hand-building on a mat-lined surface. These technological groups correspond very closely to cemetery distributions, which suggests that the different techniques may be specific to different potterymaking traditions. It is suggested that vessel forming-technology in the so-called C-Group tradition is distinct from that of the so-called Pan-Grave and Kerma traditions, and that the validity of the divisions between Nubian cultural groups should thus be further interrogated.

Part II Substantive Aspects, Ch.4 Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lenzerini Federico
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Community ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Protection Of Cultural Heritage

This chapter focuses on the practice of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage, which has represented a plague accompanying humanity throughout all phases of its history and has involved many different human communities either as perpetrators or victims. In most instances of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage, the target of perpetrators is not the heritage in itself but, rather, the communities and persons for whom the heritage is of special significance. This reveals a clear discriminatory and persecutory intent against the targeted cultural groups, or even against the international community as a whole. As such, intentional destruction of cultural heritage, in addition of being qualified as a war crime, is actually to be considered as a crime against humanity. Furthermore, it also produces notable implications in terms of human rights protection. Protection of cultural heritage against destruction is today a moral and legal imperative representing one of the priorities of the international community. In this respect, two rules of customary international law exist prohibiting intentional destruction of cultural heritage in time of war and in peacetime.

scholarly journals Inventory and Protection of Photographs from the Julij Felaher Collection

Atlanti ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-102
Author(s):  
Lucija Planinc ◽  
Marija Grabnar ◽  
Jedert Vodopivec Tomažič
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Basic Information ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Physical Protection ◽  
Photographic Technique ◽  
Permanent Storage ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
And Storage ◽  
Primary Support

Photographs bear visual memories of events, people, buildings and landscapes. The sensitivity of the materials used makes them a vulnerable part of cultural heritage, therefore their appropriate use and storage is ever more important. The work presented is based on an inventory of photographs from the Julij Felaher Collection (SI AS 1384) kept by the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia. In addition to basic information, the inventory sheet used also included reference to the type of photographic technique, the type of primary support, the type of damage, and an assessment of the preservation status. Based on the data obtained, physical protection of the photographs was carried out in order to enable their permanent storage.

scholarly journals Trafficking Cultural Objects and Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Yates
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
Western Model ◽  
Cultural Self ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Rights Standards

Since the end of the second world war, international cultural heritage protection law and its domestic legal components have proceeded in their development in tandem with the development of international human rights laws and norms. A core tension in human rights thinking is evident also in debates about the right to cultural property: the potential for conflict between the right to cultural self–determination by one group and attempts to develop and promulgate human rights standards with universalising ambitions. This is reflected in cultural property ownership debates, where cultural heritage may be considered by some people as the common heritage of humankind and thus to some extent owned by us all, while others would see it as more properly owned by members of a more restricted group, or perhaps communally as tangible items of a certain culture.So there is a universalism vs particularism debate about the right to own, possess or otherwise enjoy, worship or value cultural objects just as there is the same debate on a much wider scale about universalism vs particularism in human rights in general. As with that wider debate, where universalism has been criticised for being a veil for the global transfer of western liberal capitalist values (e.g. Woodiwiss 2005), so too in the cultural property debate the construction of the idea of ‘the world’s cultural heritage’ has tended to represent in practice a view that favours the idea of the ‘encyclopaedic’ Western model of the museum, thus suggesting an ideal where material cultural heritage is stored in cultural repositories around the world rather than leaving (or reinstating) it to its country of origin or to a community thought to have the closest historical, cultural or religious connection to it.This view is fiercely opposed by those who consider this to be, in effect, an attempted justification of the forcible extraction of this particular resource from the developing world. They prefer to define and delineate cultural property rights in terms of ‘the property of a culture’ rather than as ‘property which is cultural’ insofar as the latter might represent a contemporary reflection of the values and views of the global art market rather than the communities and cultures whose heritage is at stake. In international legislation aimed at cultural property protection there is some ambivalence around these views, with the preambles of the governing conventions tending to strike a diplomatic balance between recognising important cultural artefacts as the particular interests of cultural groups, states or ‘all peoples’, while also approving of some of the effects of the worldwide diffusion of cultural heritage, most of which is due to the mechanics of the art market.

scholarly journals Arduino-controlled Reflectance Transformation Imaging to the study of cultural heritage objects

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Corregidor ◽  
Renato Dias ◽  
Norberto Catarino ◽  
Carlos Cruz ◽  
Luís C. Alves ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Heritage Objects ◽  
Reflectance Transformation Imaging

Cultural Genocide and Restitution: The Early Wave of Jewish Cultural Restitution in the Aftermath of World War II

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-374
Author(s):  
Leora Bilsky
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
International Law ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
Military Tribunal

AbstractCultural restitution in international law typically aims to restore cultural property to the state of origin. The experience of World War II raised the question of how to adapt this framework to deal with states that persecuted cultural groups within their own borders. Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews and its attempt to destroy their cultural heritage began before the war and was carried out systematically throughout the war in the conquered territories. After the war, the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin advocated for the recognition of the new crime of genocide and, in particular, its cultural dimensions. Jewish organizations also argued that cultural destruction should be seen as an integral component of the crime of genocide and that the remedy of cultural restitution should be part of the effort to rehabilitate the injured group, but their efforts to gain recognition in the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg for the unique harm suffered by the Jews were unsuccessful. This article discusses an innovative approach developed by Jewish jurists and scholars in the late 1940s and 1950s, according to which heirless cultural property was returned to Jewish organizations as trustees for the Jewish people. Though largely forgotten in the annals of law, this approach offers a promising model for international law to overcome its statist bias and recognize the critical importance of cultural heritage for the rehabilitation of (non-state) victim groups.

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