Contested Cultural Heritage

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Contested Cultural Heritage: A Selective Historiography

   • Helaine Silverman

   Pages 1-49

3. The Stratigraphy of Forgetting: The Great Mosque of Cordoba and Its Contested Legacy

   • D. Fairchild Ruggles

   Pages 51-67

4. Aestheticized Geographies of Conflict: The Politicization of Culture and the Culture of Politics in Belfast’s Mural Tradition

   • Alexandra Hartnett

   Pages 69-107

5. Blood of Our Ancestors: Cultural Heritage Management in the Balkans

   • Michael L. Galaty

   Pages 109-124

6. Re-imagining the National Past: Negotiating the Roles of Science, Religion, and History in Contemporary British Ghost Tourism

   • Michele M. Hanks

   Pages 125-139

7. Collecting and Repatriating Egypt’s Past: Toward a New Nationalism

   • Salima Ikram

   Pages 141-154

8. National Identity Interrupted: The Mutilation of the Parthenon Marbles and the Greek Claim for Repatriation

   • Vasiliki Kynourgiopoulou

   Pages 155-170

9. Syrian National Museums: Regional Politics and the Imagined Community

   • Kari A. Zobler

   Pages 171-191

10. Contestation from the Top: Fascism in the Realm of Culture and Italy’s Conception of the Past

    • Alvaro Higueras

    Pages 193-204

11. Touring the Slave Route: Inaccurate Authenticities in Bénin, West Africa

    • Timothy R. Landry

    Pages 205-231

12. Carving the Nation: Zimbabwean Sculptors and the Contested Heritage of Aesthetics

    • Lance L. Larkin

    Pages 233-259

13. Afterword: El Pilar and Maya Cultural Heritage: Reflections of a Cheerful Pessimist

    • Anabel Ford

    Pages 261-265

14. Back Matter

    Pages 267-286

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Cultural heritage is material – tangible and intangible – that signifies a culture’s history or legacy. It has become a venue for contestation, ranging in scale from protesting to violently claimed and destroyed. But who defines what is to be preserved and what is to be erased? As cultural heritage becomes increasingly significant across the world, the number of issues for critical analysis and, hopefully, mediation, arise. The issue stems from various groups: religious, ethnic, national, political, and others come together to claim, appropriate, use, exclude, or erase markers and manifestations of their own and others’ cultural heritage as a means for asserting, defending, or denying critical claims to power, land, and legitimacy. Can cultural heritage be well managed and promoted while at the same time kept within parameters so as to diminish contestation? The cases herein rage from Greece, Spain, Egypt, the UK, Syria, Zimbabwe, Italy, the Balkans, Bénin, and Central America.

• Contested Spaces
• Cultural Identity
• Elgin Marbles
• Material Culture
• National Identity
• Parthenon
• Religious Identity
• World Heritage Sites

• Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana, USA

  Helaine Silverman

Policies and ethics