* This is the fifth installment of “Problematica.” It is written by Max Dresow…
His name was Thomas Bruce, but history remembers him as the 7th Earl of Elgin, who served as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1798 to 1803. During that time, most of the territory that today belongs to Greece was under Ottoman rule. This left the wonders of the classical period, in Elgin’s words, “prey [to] mischievous Turks who mutilated [them] for wanton amusement, or for the purpose of selling them piecemeal to occasional travelers.” The artifacts needed to be rescued—or at least that is how Elgin rationalized his decision to haul off a prodigious amount of statuary, including the sculptures that still adorned the upper reaches of the Parthenon in Athens. And while Elgin had designs on using the loot to decorate his ancestral home, much of it ended up in London, where it remains today in the holdings of the British Museum.
A section of the Parthenon frieze on display at the British Museum
The most famous items taken from the Parthenon were a series of sculptures carved in bas-relief, depicting what is in all likelihood the Panathenaic procession, complete with gods and cows and four-horse chariots. There was also a collection of high relief panels depicting Lapiths and centaurs engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and some statues cut down from the east and west pediments. Almost since the items were removed, debate has raged over whether they were rescued from dereliction or shamelessly plundered with the permission of officials who were in no position to give them away. The British Museum has long maintained that they were acquired legally, and anyway, that they convey “huge public benefit as part of the Museum’s worldwide collection.” Byron, for one, disagreed:
Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on Thee,
Nor feels as Lovers o’er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands… [and so forth]
Now, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the “Elgin marbles,” if only because Britain and Greece are currently in talks about their reunification. But unless you follow paleontology pretty closely, you may have missed a similar story. Last July, another European nation agreed to return a relic of sorts to its home country. The object had been acquired from Brazil with an export permit issued by a local mining official, or so it was claimed. It then resided in the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe, where in 2020 it became the holotype of a new species of dinosaur, Ubirajara jubatus.
Ubirajara is a relative of the diminutive theropod Compsognathus. The latter’s claim to fame is that it served as one-half of a comparison that strongly suggested a dinosaurian origin for birds. (The other half was Archaeopteryx). But whereas Compsognathus looks rather stereotypically dinosaurian, Ubirajara is an odd (stem) bird. For one thing, it seems to have possessed a fluffy “mane” of hair-like structures that ran along its neck, back, and tail. This makes it the first dinosaur found in the Southern hemisphere to exhibit what are most likely precursors to feathers. More noteworthy, however, are the elongated spikes or “ribbons” that seem to have protruded from its shoulders. These could have been display structures, or perhaps defensive ones. At any rate, they seem to have been straight and stiff; hence the name Ubirajara, which means “Lord of the spear.”
Life reconstruction of Ubirajara jubatus, with conspicuous shoulder spikes looking a bit like crisscrossed hairsticks. Credit: Luxquine/Wikimedia Commons
As I indicated, it was recently agreed that the Ubirajara fossil will be returned to Brazil. The agreement was reached after it was determined that the fossil had been transported to Germany by a private company, which contradicted previous statements that it had been acquired over ten years earlier with permission from the Brazilian government. This clearly violates Brazil’s fossil heritage laws, supplying a strong rationale for returning the specimen. But what if the case for repatriation had been less clear-cut? It is easy to imagine a scenario in which Brazil had no fossil heritage laws, at least at the time the specimen was exported. If this had been the case, what grounds would the government have had for demanding the return of the fossil? Or, to put the question more generally: what might an argument for fossil repatriation look like in cases where no demonstrable illegality is involved? Given the long history of colonialism in paleontology, questions like may have a real role to play in forthcoming public debates.
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In trying to formulate an answer, it may be useful to examine arguments in support of reunifying the Elgin marbles. The reason is that Bruce did not saw off the adornments of the Parthenon and convey them to England under the cover of darkness. Instead, he acquired a permit from the deputy of the grand vizier (a member of the sultan’s inner circle), which allowed him to make excavations, erect scaffolding, and even “take away some pieces of stone” containing “old figures or inscriptions.” Now, I am not suggesting that this establishes the legality of Bruce’s actions. Perhaps the Ottoman government was in no position to greenlight the dismantling of the Acropolis. Or perhaps Bruce violated the permit by hauling off nearly half of the surviving statuary from the Parthenon (the expression “some pieces of stone” is ambiguous). All I wish to suggest is that the case is less clear-cut than that of Ubirajara, where a particular law was violated in the acquisition of the specimen, supplying a strong rationale for its repatriation.
In light of this ambiguity, it seems unlikely that the fate of the Elgin marbles will be decided on legal grounds. As evidence for this claim, consider that most of the reasons that have been adduced for repatriation are moral or aesthetic in nature as opposed to legal. The Greek government, for example, has tended to make four arguments. The marbles belong in Athens, the government argues,
Because the monument to which they belong, namely the Parthenon, is in Athens;
Because in Athens the marbles will be exhibited close to the Parthenon and within sight of it, and the visitor can form a complete picture of the temple in its entirety.
Because they form an inseparable part of the monument—the symbol of Greek Classical civilisation at its apogee. The restitution of the marbles will restore the unity of the decoration and the architectural cohesion of the monument.
Because the British have an obligation, not to Greece but to the cultural heritage of the whole world, to restore its symbol, the Parthenon, which is also the emblem of UNESCO.
Notice that these arguments employ somewhat different strategies. (1) and (3) claim that the marbles form an integral part of the Parthenon, which is in Athens; (2) claims that reuniting the marbles will produce the most value for people visiting the Parthenon; and (4) claims that the British government has a moral obligation to the whole of humanity to restore the Parthenon and so return the marbles.
The view from inside the Acropolis Museum, which looks out on the Parthenon. The Acropolis Museum houses many of the Parthenon marbles and will house the “Elgin marbles” if they are returned to Greece
Earlier I asked what an argument for fossil repatriation might look like in cases where no demonstrable illegality is involved. Do any of (1)–(4) show promise as models for such an argument?
To begin, (1) is not very promising. Perhaps it could be argued that the Ubirajara fossil “belongs to” the Crato geological formation, and that this supplies a warrant for returning it to Brazil. But notice that the argument hinges on the notion that certain kinds of parts should be physically reunited with certain kinds of wholes—and here the relevant whole is not the nation of Brazil, but a particular rock unit. It is thus an argument for putting Ubirajara back in the ground, or perhaps for installing it in a museum adjacent to its native quarry. Anyway, it is not the argument we’re looking for.
(4) hits closer to the mark, but is no more adequate for this. Yes, “market nations” have the capacity to return fossils to “source nations,” and yes, this is a fine and benevolent thing to do. But the crux of (4) is the claim that the Parthenon is a monument of unique value to “the cultural heritage of the whole world.” Despite the fact that the Crato formation is a lagerstätte, there is no similar claim to be made about any entity of which the Ubirajara fossil is a part. As a consequence, the argument fails to go through.
Next consider (2), or a minor variant of it. This is more promising. In general discussions of paleontology and colonialism, a favored rationale for keeping fossils in the nations of the Global South is the value this will create in those nations. Advocates are particularly keen to emphasize the role fossils can play in stimulating interest in paleontology, especially when these fossils hail from the regions they are displayed in. Returning fossils to their native countries thus promises to enrich the scientific lives of these countries, and to grow the number of paleontologists working on native fossils. Conversely, denying citizens of the Global South the chance to interact with native fossils deprives them of opportunities for cultural enrichment, which seems especially pernicious when it is part of a pattern of similar deprivations.
This seems right as far as it goes. It does seem wrong to deprive a people of the opportunity for cultural enrichment, and the removal of fossils en masse from a country is a kind of cultural deprivation. Even the removal of a single fossil may constitute a deprivation if the specimen is special enough. (Perhaps Ubirajara is such a specimen. It is certainly a rara avis, phenotypically speaking.) Yet for this argument to supply a persuasive rationale for repatriation, it must be the case that the value a specimen would create in a Brazilian museum (say) would be greater than the value it would create in a European museum. And it might not be. More to the point, it is difficult to see how estimates of value creation could be made objective, even if all values could be rendered commensurable (a big “if”). Witness the long-standing British claim that the marbles provide more “public benefit” in London than in Athens, and the Greek government’s claims to the contrary.
That leaves (3). And on its face, (3) seems to fare no better than (1). The Ubirajara fossil does not form an integral part of any monument that can be regarded as a symbol of Brazilian civilization. In addition, I am skeptical that any argument grounded in predominantly aesthetic considerations will be effective in the case of fossil repatriation.
Still, there is a subtext to (3) that points toward a model for fossil repatriation claims, and it is here that I want to focus for the remainder of this essay. Notice that (3) describes the Parthenon as a symbol of Greek Classical Civilization at its apogee. Now, if we understand this to mean that the Parthenon is an entity with great cultural value for Greeks, then there may be grounds for treating the marbles as “cultural property” of the Greek people. And this may in turn supply a warrant for repatriation that does not hinge on the circumstances surrounding their acquisition.*
[* Historically, the Greek government has wanted no part of arguments about who owns the marbles. As former Minister for Culture Theodoros Pangalos put it, “Who owns the sculptures is unimportant, irrelevant, and immaterial.” Presumably he said this to avoid wrangling over the legality of Elgin’s actions. The crux of the matter is not the legality of Elgin’s action, but where the marbles presently belong.]
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The bones of contention. Credit: Felipe Lima Pinheiro
The strategy I will sketch in this section is doubly tentative. It is tentative in the first place because it is inspired by an argument about the Elgin marbles that has not been widely accepted. This is the argument of legal scholar Nadia Banteka, based on earlier work by Margaret Radin. But it is also tentative because there is a clear difference between the marbles and the Ubirajara fossil. The marbles are artifacts. They are objects made by human beings situated at a particular node in a vast network of cultural traditions and inheritances. Fossils, by contrast, are natural objects. They are discovered by humans, yes, but they are not made by them, except in a sense that is irrelevant to the present argument.*
[* The sense is this. According to Caitlin Wylie (2021), while fossils are not made by humans, specimens are. This is because the work involved in turning fossils into researchable specimens involves numerous decisions that influence the specimens that result. I say this is irrelevant to the present argument because in cases of fossils exported to the Global North, fossil preparation generally takes place in Northern countries. So, to the extent that these fossils (sensu specimens) are made by humans, they are made by humans in the Global North. (Please note that I have not been observing this careful distinction between fossils and specimens in this essay.)]
Banteka’s argument is based on Margaret Radin’s proposal that some property is non-fungible and inalienable. As Radin writes, “[certain items of property are] part of the way we constitute ourselves as continuing personal entities in the world” (Radin 1982, 957). Perhaps the item is a family heirloom. Or perhaps it is the body itself, or some part of the body. In any case, “[an] object is closely related to one’s personhood if its loss causes pain that cannot be relieved by the object’s replacement.” This contrasts with objects of a more fungible kind, which are “perfectly replaceable with other goods of equal market value.” (Most property falls into the latter category.)
To make these ideas apply to the Elgin marbles, Banteka argues that the logic of personal property applies with equal force to cultural property: property that is owned not by an individual, but by a group. Citing Patty Gerstenblith (2004), Banteka claims that, with cultural property, “the identity of a group is inextricably linked to the object, rendering [the] group unable to consent to transactions that would alienate it” (Banteka 2016, 1243). This justifies greater legal protections for cultural property, since any alienation of such items would almost certainly be the result of coercion. In addition, the demands of intergenerational justice seem to require “that [items of cultural property] be inherently inalienable in order to safeguard the flourishing of future generations” (1245). Basically: if a group’s flourishing is tied to its affirmation under a particular identity, and if this identity is in turn tied to bits of cultural property, then justice demands that the property be preserved as a condition of the future welfare of the group.
These remarks have necessarily been highly compressed, and will have raised as many questions in your mind as they have answered. Still, I hope you can see how they form a rationale for the repatriation of the marbles. Insofar as the marbles fit the definition of cultural property, they are inalienable—not from the Parthenon, but from the Greek people. Elgin’s removal of the marbles “injured Greek grouphood” by appropriating a symbol of Greek identity to an alien culture (Banteka 2016, 1250). The only response is to return the property, as much for the well-being of future generations of Greeks as for those currently living.
Now apply this reasoning to the Ubirajara specimen. Does it work? Everything turns on whether it’s plausible to claim that the removal of the specimen injured Brazilian grouphood in a manner similar to how the removal of the marbles injured Greek grouphood (without requiring that the injuries be of the same magnitude). And this is not out of the question. Insofar as Brazil’s fossil heritage forms an important strand of Brazilian cultural identity, then the removal of an especially spectacular part of that heritage might represent a considerable injury to the group.* Anyway, the possibility should not be dismissed out of hand, despite the obvious disanalogies with the case of the marbles.
[* That few Brazilians knew of the Ubirajara specimen prior to 2020 makes it hard to see how the specimen itself could be integral to Brazilian cultural identity. But perhaps this is not so different from the case of the marbles. How many Greeks were directly aware of the Parthenon frieze, or the statues sawn off the pediments, before their repatriation became a national concern? It hardly matters if the answer is “not many” since it is the Parthenon that is partly constitutive of Greek identity, not this or that part of the structure. But if this is the case, then why should the parts of Brazil’s fossil heritage be treated any differently?]
Another reconstruction of Ubirajara, this one representing the “spears” as feather-like structures. Credit: Dani Navarro
The notion of cultural property has been criticized for perpetuating an “anemic” and ultimately harmful view of culture. As Naomi Mezey puts it, “Within cultural property discourse, the idea of property has so colonized the idea of culture that there is not much culture left in cultural property” (Mezey 2007, 2005). Instead, what we have are a series of forced alignments between groups of people and collections of things, framed by a preservationist stance that regards culture as basically static and inherently good. Criticisms like this deserve a hearing. Still, it remains the case that appeals to inalienable property form the strongest argument for fossil repatriation in the absence of demonstrable illegality. If a fossil counts as cultural property in a sense associated with an inalienability regime, then repatriation claims enjoy a general warrant. This may even apply to fossils acquired through legal means, especially if it can be argued that coercion was involved in the acquisition of the material.
Of course, the preceding “if” is a big one. Fossils may not count as cultural property in the relevant sense, in which case arguments for repatriation will have to adopt a different tack. Perhaps such a tack is available, perhaps not. Anyway, it is entirely possible that no argument for repatriation will be especially effective in the absence of demonstrable illegality. I am intrigued by Banteka’s argument for reuniting the marbles, but I am less convinced that it applies to the fossil case. The problem is not that the notion of cultural property fails to apply to natural objects. Fossils can be cultural property; indeed, “objects of paleontological interest” are included within the scope of the influential UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970). The problem is rather that not all items of cultural property clear the high bar required to count as inalienable. For this, an object must be constitutively implicated in a group’s identity and continued flourishing. How many fossils, or indeed fossil heritages, meet this requirement?
* * *
There is a certain irony in the fact that it was the “Spear Lord” that punctured paleontological colonialism, drawing an unprecedented level of attention to an issue that had long remained out of sight. However, the animal (informally) known as Ubirajara may soon have a new moniker. The paper describing Ubirajara was withdrawn last year from Cretaceous Research. Presumably, Brazilian scientists will soon redescribe the specimen and in the process rechristen it. It seems only fitting that it should receive a name like brasiliensis, but we shall see. Anyway, it is Brazilian scientists who will decide, and that is ultimately the point.
References
Banteka, N. 2016. The Parthenon marbles revisited: a new strategy for Greece. University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 4:1231–1271.
Gerstenblith, P. 2004. Art, Cultural Heritage, and the Law: Cases and Materials. Carolina Academic Press.
Mezey, N. 2007. The paradoxes of cultural property. Columbia Law Review 107:2004–2046.
Radin, M.J. 1982. Property and personhood. Stanford Law Review 34:957–1015.
Wylie, C.D. 2021. Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work Behind the Scenes. Cambridge: MIT Press.
FOR MORE ON THE ELGIN/PARTHENON Marbles, sEE:
This journal article, which provides a nice overview of the issues involved, and presents an economic argument for reunification.
This article from Smithsonian Magazine, which examines a recent book on Thomas Bruce.
And this recent video from Aeon on the history of the marbles.
For more on the Ubirajara controversy, see:
This story from Nature’s news division.
This nice write-up from National Geographic (along with the follow-up here).
And finally, please see this excellent article on colonial practices in paleontology, published in Royal Society Open Science.