The nation, the élite and the Southeast Asian antiquities trade: With special reference to Thailand (original) (raw)
Related papers
Archaeological Heritage Management in Thailand
American Anthropologist, 2017
In the fall of 2015, I asked my colleague, Professor Helaine Silverman, if she was interested in putting together a special subsection on cultural heritage for this World Anthropologies section of American Anthropologist. I wanted the majority of the authors to be based outside the United States and Europe because issues surrounding cultural heritage management are present in many parts of the world, even though a large number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites are in Europe. 1 For years I have known of Helaine Silverman's passion for cultural heritage management, cultural heritage politics, and the role of UNESCO in designating places-many of them archaeological-as World Heritage Sites. She is, among other things, cofounder and director of the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2 She has also made professional connections and official exchanges with cultural heritage management scholars, curators, leaders, and institutions, both inside and outside the United States. When she enthusiastically agreed to take on this task, we worked together to identify possible contributors, the length of their essays, the topics she wanted to cover, and her own role in all this. Afterward, she took on the tasks of contacting contributors, encouraging them, keeping them on track, and making sure their essays dealt with the topics she had assigned them, though she also ensured that they would (and could) write from their own vantage points and experiences. For all this-including the interview she conducted for this collection of essays-I am extremely grateful to Helaine. Including archaeologists and museum curators from seven different countries (Malta,
Cultural Resource Management and Archaeology at Chiang Saen, Northern Thailand
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000
Using Chiang Saen in northern Thailand as a case study, this paper describes the practice of archaeology as conducted by the Thai Fine Arts Department. In particular, it examines how the Chiang Saen archaeological site has been treated under the rubric of “cultural resource management”.
The problem with looting: An alternative perspective on antiquities trafficking in Southeast Asia
The 1950s and 1960s constitute a key " moment " in the history of the looting of archaeological sites in Southeast Asia. The emergence in the region at that time of a commodity market for antiquities such as pottery triggered a wave of illicit excavation of archaeological sites. Simultaneous with the trafficking of antiquities out of the Philippines and Thailand into the hands of private collectors and museums in the West during this period and subsequent decades a thriving domestic antiquities market developed. It is argued here that the valorization of antiquities as national heritage, rather than inhibiting acquisition by citizen collectors, facilitated a process wherein collecting became a form of cultural capital accumulation. It is inaccurate to categorize Thailand and the Philippines simply as " source " or " supply " nodes in the global antiquities trade. This paper aims for a more nuanced approach to the geoeconomics of antiquities consumption.
Excavating Southeast Asia's Prehistory in the Cold War: American Archaeology in Neocolonial Thailand
Journal of Social Archaeology 16(1), 2016
The discovery and excavation in the 1960s through to the mid 1970s of several prehistoric sites in north and northeastern Thailand, the best known being the World Heritage site of Ban Chiang, were a major breakthrough in Southeast Asian archaeology. Evidence of an autonomous Bronze Age tradition contradicted colonial scholarship’s view of Southeast Asia as a cultural backwater that owed its advancement to imports from India and China. Subsequently, based on a dating later rejected, Ban Chiang was at the center of an international debate about the beginning of world metallurgy. Focus on chronological and typological issues has obscured the fact that American archaeologists surveyed and excavated sites in Northeast Thailand at the time when the region was thoroughly militarized to provide frontline facilities for the Vietnam War. This article examines the production of American archaeological knowledge on Southeast Asian prehistory in relation to the Cold War politics, and more specifically of Thailand’s neocolonial dependence on the United States.
1997
[Note, June 6, 2018:] Only the Preface and introductory essay by P.M. Taylor are uploaded here. The entire 1997 book, long out of print, is now available online for free viewing or download [normally at]: http://www.achp.si.edu/Treasures-of-Two-Nations\_FULL-BOOK.pdf [but temporarily with "books" below, while some Smithsonian websites are being re-designed]. This important survey of Thai Royal Gifts to the United States is in strong demand now as a substantive study of the history, symbolism, and significance of those gifts. A revised and expanded edition is currently in preparation by a team of Thai and American scholars, for publication in 2020. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = [1997:] Preface and Acknowledgements. [Pp. 9-11 in: "Treasures of Two Nations: Thai Royal Gifts to the United States of America", by Lisa McQuail. Washington, D.C.: Asian Cultural History Program, Smithsonian Institution. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = The Thai Royal Gifts so admirably researched and illustrated in this volume are deeply symbolic of the long and evolving friendship between Thailand (formerly called Siam) and the United States of America. This study documents for the first time a group of artifacts whose meaning and significance have, until now, been inadequately understood by scholars, and sometimes even misunderstood by the recipients of the gifts themselves-the presidents and people of the United States. Yet for both Thais and Americans these gifts truly are historic, artistic, and scientific treasures, through which the Kings of Thailand represented their nation, and its alliances with America through time. Nearly all sets of gifts, from the courtly nielloware, silks, musical instruments and weapons to the everyday basketry, tools, agricultural samples and fish traps, were accompanied by a Royal Letter listing the contents of the gift (in Thai and English), and explaining its significance. This catalog introduces those Royal Letters and their lists, for the first time, into the interpretation of the gifts. This book will interest art-, social-, and diplomatic historians; anthropologists, linguists, and ethnomusicologists; students of Thai theater and culture; and all those who will appreciate the aesthetic quality of the gift objects or the very good stories those objects were meant to tell.
World Heritage and WikiLeaks Territory, Trade, and Temples on the Thai-Cambodian Border
Globalization and world-making projects, like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage program, have changed the stakes for particular heritage sites. Through processes of greater interdependence and connectivity, specific sites are transformed into transactional commodities with exchange values that transcend their historical or material characteristics and thus can be wrested from those contexts to serve other international interests. To illustrate, I employ evidence from the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to offer an unprecedented vantage onto one contested archaeological site, Preah Vihear temple in Cambodia. Thrust into the international spotlight with UNESCO World Heritage inscription in 2008, followed by the International Court of Justice rulings, we can trace the site's connectivity across national political intrigues, international border wars, bilateral negotiations surrounding gas and steel contracts, and military alignments. The very fact that so much politicking occurred around one site, and one that was largely invisible in international heritage circles until its controversial UNESCO listing and the resultant border war, is instructive. In essence, what the leaked cables reveal are the linkages between seemingly unrelated spheres and events, thus underscoring the intricate hyperconnectivity of heritage.