Posted on: March 11, 2024 by Rebecca Hawkes-Reynolds
Stonehenge has been a permanent feature and place-marker on the landscape in Wiltshire for thousands of years. It has also a been a semi-permanent feature of headlines and as a topic on this blog. However this may soon no longer be the case, as Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) have had their application for […]
Posted on: December 22, 2020 by Alexander Herman
If the end of year is necessarily a busy time, this has only been accentuated by the chaos wreaked by the pandemic and, for those in the UK, the impending end of the Brexit transition period (which expires on 31 December). We can certainly say that the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport […]
Posted on: December 11, 2020 by Rebecca Hawkes-Reynolds
On Friday 2nd December 2020 it is likely that many archaeologists, curators and metal detectorists woke up pleased at the announcement from the Government that the definition of treasure for the Treasure Act 1996 will be revised. However, it is also equally probable that the same number were perplexed and worried as to how this […]
Posted on: November 18, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Officially launched last month, the UK’s Emergency Heritage Management Project will look to help preserve and recover cultural objects and edifices in Iraq that are under threat. In the words of the press release: “It will create a team of local experts to assess, document and stabilise afflicted sites in Iraq, and help begin the process […]
Posted on: July 21, 2015 by Alexander Herman
There was an interesting development last week in the area of copyright exceptions in the UK. A judge of the High Court quashed (i.e. nullified or rendered inoperable) the exception introduced by the Government last October through the Personal Copies for Private Use Regulations 2014. This is quite something. The courts, through judicial review, are overturning a governmental mechanism which had allowed […]
Posted on: March 30, 2015 by Alexander Herman
With an end of March deadline looming, the UK government and the British Museum have at last responded to UNESCO’s request to enter into mediation with Greece regarding the future treatment of the Elgin (or Parthenon) Marbles. The request was made on 9 August 2013 at the behest of Greece (both the UK and Greece are members […]
Posted on: March 10, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Yesterday, an ‘early day motion‘ was presented before the UK Parliament by MP Andrew George calling on Britain to engage in a ‘gracious act’ and reunite the sculptures at the British Museum (aka the Elgin Marbles) with those kept in Athens’s purpose-built Acropolis Museum, ‘in the shadow of the monument to which they belong’. More specifically, the motion calls […]
Posted on: March 9, 2015 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
There has been a slew of media coverage in the UK and elsewhere on the reported destruction by agents of the Islamic State (ISIS) of the unequalled archaeological site of Nimrud in Iraq. While many of the reliefs, wall paintings and a number of the mythical winged bull gatekeepers are kept out of harm’s way […]
Posted on: February 25, 2015 by Alexander Herman
It is an iconic work by the great Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși (pronounced, in true Romanian form, as ‘Brancoush’). It is a sculpture of a naked woman with her arms folded, her knees pulled close. It is entitled The Wisdom of the Earth. And now it is at the centre of yet another legal ‘dispute’ involving the Romanian state and […]
Posted on: February 16, 2015 by Rosemary Baird
On 4 September 2010 an earthquake of 7.1 magnitude struck the Canterbury region of New Zealand. It was followed by thousands of aftershocks, including one of 6.3 magnitude that struck the city of Christchurch on 22 February 2011. It caused widespread destruction of buildings and 185 deaths. A national state of emergency was declared. Today, almost four years later, […]