CIVILIZATION
AND ARCHEOLOGY
British adventurer
Sir Aurel Stein sent home more than 40,000 relics from his explorations round
Asia, most of which are still in the UK. Either one of history's heroes, or
one of its greatest plunderers, the 60th anniversary of his death again raises
the question of whether museums need to confront their own past.
Photo:
Leaving
for London
Stein transported the thousands of manuscripts, paintings and
artifacts to the UK and India on the backs of camels. In the 1920s with new
interest in their own heritage, the Chinese authorities refused permission for
Stein to make further trips to the region.
Photo:
Stein (right) conducted "the most daring and adventurous raid
Sir Aurel
Stein brought the cultural treasures of the wilds of western China to the
vaults of the British Museum. His feats were described by one of his
contemporaries as "the most daring and adventurous raid upon the ancient
world that any archaeologist has attempted". While his life's work is
celebrated in the western world, he is remembered in a very different way by
countries whose heritage he "looted". The heritage taken is China's parallel
to the Greek claim on the Elgin Marbles - priceless friezes taken from the
temple of the Parthenon in the 19th Century: both are unique cultural relics
taken away by Europeans. The Marbles are still housed at the British Museum;
negotiations with Greece have ended with the museum adamant the historic
statues are staying in the UK. A museum which is being built to house them
in Greece is set to remain empty.
CULTURAL DISPUTES
Photo:
Treasures of Dunhuang
On his first
trip Stein crossed the massive Taklamakan desert on an arduous journey. But
it was his second trip on which he uncovered thousands of manuscripts and
paintings in the Cave of One Thousand Buddhas at Dunhuang, that was to
establish him as one of the most important scholars of Buddhist history.
But what should happen to all this cultural heritage residing far from its origins? Now the expertise to care for antiquities is universal, heritage institutions of the West have more difficulty maintaining their role as sole guardians of world heritage. A resolution passed in the 1980s by the United Nations agency of education and culture, UNESCO, urged the return of artifacts to their country of origin. It has subsequently chalked up several successes in helping to resolve disputes over cultural and historical items. In many respects, Stein was the ruthless raider some describe. But he did what was normal in the context of the era, says the British Museum's Helen Wang, an expert in coins of the region. "Locally these items would have been traded, bought, sold and the collection would have been destroyed," she says. "He wanted these relics to be where experts could look at them. For him it was irrelevant where they ended up."
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