[Download] "Archaeology and Nation-Building in Iraq (Reclaiming a Plundered Past: Archaeology and Nation Building in Modern Iraq) (Book Review)" by The Journal of the American Oriental Society * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Archaeology and Nation-Building in Iraq (Reclaiming a Plundered Past: Archaeology and Nation Building in Modern Iraq) (Book Review)
- Author : The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Release Date : January 01, 2006
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 226 KB
Description
Reclaiming a Plundered Past belongs to a fairly new genre of history that examines the use of archaeology in the creation of nationalism (see p. 323, n. 14 for references). In this study, Magnus Bernhardsson, a historian of modern Iraq, has focused on the creation and history of the Department of Antiquities and the role of the past as employed in the process of Iraqi state building since the British occupation after the First World War. Like the authors of other such studies, he is addressing historians in general and modern Middle East historians in particular, but he has another audience in the archaeologists and philologists who specialize in ancient Mesopotamia and Islamic-period Iraq. Written initially as a doctoral dissertation at Yale (1999), Bernhardsson's book reached its present form in the days after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with the looting of the Baghdad Museum and other cultural institutions throughout the country. The book comes at an opportune time, given the current debate and lawsuits related to the responsibility for cultural property in time of war and occupation, the "ownership of culture," and the ongoing contest for "ownership" that pits consumer-countries' museums, collectors, dealers, and some allied academics on one hand and the source-countries, UNESCO, and many field-research-oriented academics on the other. The present situation in Iraq gives Bernhardsson a good starting point in his introduction for a discussion of the attitudes of foreigners and Iraqis to antiquities and to the use of antiquities for political purposes, chiefly the fostering of national unity and for the elaboration of a national heritage.