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corrado33 t1_isqr3nc wrote

Legitimate question: Would artifacts be safer in a large museum or in the possession of a group of people who don't have a museum?

In some cases the answer is obvious. If the people you stole from are well established and have their own museums, then sure, give it back. But what if that's not true. What if the people you're giving it back to don't have their own museums? What happens to it? Does it decay somewhere to be forgotten to time?

I have no idea who has and who doesn't have museums, I'm simply speculating.

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mlwspace2005 t1_isrdad2 wrote

Does it matter if they are safer? If I broke into your house and stole your TV or the urn with your grandmother's ashes would my keeping them be justified if I had better storage facilities? It's their cultural artifacts and human remains. And let's not forget that those artifacts which are stored in larger institutions arnt necessarily safer, people do dumb and highly destructive things to them even there.

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corrado33 t1_issxtkc wrote

If the artifact is of significant provenance, yes.

Imagine something extremely important to the way we figured something out, say... the Rosetta stone. This artifact was extremely crucial to figuring out how certain languages work, and it's of great cultural importance as well. However, it's in the british museum which likely means it was stolen from elsewhere. What if that elsewhere doesn't have any place to properly store it? What if it's likely to get stolen and lost if it's given back. Do we just give it back, knowing full well it's likely to get stolen/destroyed?

What then?

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mlwspace2005 t1_istcx6s wrote

If that place it was taken from does not have the capacity to store it you should still return it, whatever cultural significance you attach to it means nothing against it's original cultures claim to the artifact. Especially if it's someplace like the British museum, who in the past have decided such culturally important artifacts should be scrubbed with the likes of a stiff metal wire brush and chemicals, thus permanently damaging such artifacts. Not to worry though, if you can ever scrape together enough money to travel to the UK you too can pay to see your artifact, assuming it's among the few thousand on display and not part of the 8 million objects locked up in the basement forever.

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AsianSensation1087 t1_it05vzk wrote

Yes. Give it back. It's theirs. They'll take care of it.

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corrado33 t1_it0dvvg wrote

And if they don't?

And an important artifact is destroyed/lost/stolen?

What then? We say "Whoops! That's their right, even though it's part of our history now too!"

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machinegunsyphilis t1_it3nay5 wrote

What if UC Berkeley caught and fire and everything they had burned down? What if aliens crashed their ship into their storage? We can go on all day with nonsensical what ifs.

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corrado33 t1_it4hncc wrote

UC Berkeley has top of the line fire suppression systems, ESPECIALLY wherever they'd hold artifacts.

That's.... literally the advantage of keeping artifacts in museums where they're well taken care of.

You're arguing my point here.

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PM_ME_UR_SEAHORSE t1_isr9aiz wrote

Usually human remains returned to tribes get reburied, with other artifacts it depends, but regardless they don't rightfully belong to the anthropologists or archeologists who took them or dug them up or the university that's been holding on to them, it should not be up to them what happens to the items, it should be the decision of the descendants of the people whose bodies we're talking about or who made the items. Whether they have their own museum or loan them to a museum or bury them or whatever.

The Wiyot tribe this article discusses does have a Historic Preservarion Office and a cultural center.

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