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Le projet Finds Stories : Addressing mobility through People and Object Biographies explore la mobilité de la communauté européenne yougoslave au cours des 7 000 dernières années à travers les biographies de personnes et d'objets. Ces gestes et interactions, que les archéologues peuvent pratiquer à travers des conseils scientifiques et des biographies d'objets, laissent des traces non seulement sur les objets, mais aussi sur nos corps et nos os. Le projet Finds Stories illustre les tragédies qui arrêtent la mobilité et témoigne de la narration du geste et de l'impact qu'il a eu sur les hommes et les sociétés

This paper will give an insight in the particular problems of dealing with Egyptian artefacts belonging to the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Galleries, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales (UK) resulting from a cooperative project between the Museum and University of Wales Trinity Saint David, School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology, led by the author. Most of them had once formed the private collection of Harry Hartley Southey (1871-1917), son of a local south Welsh newspaper magnate. Commissioned by the museum to write the Welsh heritage of these objects, the author combines Egyptological methods with heritage approaches to enable the museum to prove its community outreach which secures the funding of the museum. By creating as detailed as possible object biographies from the time of production of the objects in ancient Egypt over the moment of collection in the late 19th and early 20th century AD to modern reception and understanding, the biographies have to focus on the ancient Egyptian life-cycle of these unprovenanced objects as well as the (modern) narrative in which we are embedding them by using archaeological and anthropological theory. Following the contesting meanings and several identities of these ancient Egyptian objects – and several replicas from the late 19th and early 20th centuries AD – the urgency to deal with heritage becomes clear, be it "our" or world heritage, tangible or intangible.

Digital technology is increasingly used in museums for collaboration and exchange of ideas among organizations. This paper explores how co-creating digital biographies of displaced objects can unpack the multilayered meanings and values that were imparted on these objects by the sociocultural contexts they encountered. Previous research has shown that the biography of a displaced object allows us to understand what it had experienced through its movements and encounters with social contexts; importantly, the construction and study of object biographies illuminates these social contexts themselves and, in doing so, improves intercultural understanding. Drawing on theories and previous research in cross-disciplinary areas including material culture and digitization, this paper examines the complex cultural identities of displaced objects and explores how co-creating their digital biographies empowers different organizations and communities to exchange knowledge and negotiate interpretations.

The Museum aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp, Belgium, opened the doors of its long-anticipated exhibition, 100 X Congo, on 3 October 2020, highlighting the presence of a Congolese art collection that has been owned by the city for a hundred years (1920-2020). Tackling the often uneasy history of how these things ended up in museums in the colonial 'motherland', this exhibition signals a step forwards in museology in Belgium, away from mere aestheticism of Congolese and, by extension, African arts, towards, in contrast, a focus on provenance, context and cultural importance.

That the meanings and value of things can be transformed through their circulation was brought to the foreground of anthropological studies more than 30 years ago with the publication of The Social Life of Things (Appadurai 1986b). The last decade, however, has seen a move away from "object biographies" in favor of frameworks that better account for objects' complex entanglements. Recent work on object itineraries extends and challenges many elements of the biography approach and represents an intersection with critical interventions regarding materiality and agency, networks and circulation, and heritage discourses. This review evaluates the legacy of The Social Life of Things in the context of anthropological studies of the material world and suggests that thinking about itineraries rather than biographies allows us to collapse the distinctions between past and present (and future) and, thus, fully consider objects' present entanglements as central to their story.

This article focuses on the Tibetan collections of the National Museum of Scotland, which were formed by colonial agents from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. The meanings and values given to Tibetan material culture in the British colonial context was often predicated on modes of categorisation, whereby objects could be denoted as "artistic," "ethnographic," "religious" or as symbols authenticating personal experience and family ties. This article examines how these categories, and the values given to them by collectors, can be used to unpack a complex series of relationships between objects and people in the context of British-Indian colonial society.

AbstractA number of recent works have explored the value of scholarly efforts to "unpack" museum collections and examine the constitutive networks and histories of objects. The interrogations of collections through methods such as object biographies and itineraries imparts important knowledge about the institutions, disciplines, and individuals who made museum collections, contribute to deeper understandings of the roles of objects in creating meaning in and of the world, and suggest implications for future practice and policies. This article examines the object itinerary of a cultural property item of negative heritage: a three-dimensional painted plaster work of craft-art originally designed to symbolize the scientific practice of anthropology in early twentieth-century Germany and later associated with wartime collecting during World War II, the history of American archaeology, and the modern repatriation movement in museums.

In 1978, UNESCO Secretary General Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow compared cultural colonial objects to 'witnesses to history'. Their treatment is one of the most debated questions of our time. Calls for a novel international cultural order go back to decolonization. However, for decades, the issue has been treated as a matter of comity or been reduced to a Shakespearean dilemma: to return or not to return. This book seeks to go beyond these classic dichotomies. It argues that contemporary practices are at a tipping point. It shows that cultural takings were material to the colonial project throughout different periods (early takings, birth of modern nation state, nineteenth-century scramble for objects) and went far beyond looting. It relies on micro histories and object biographies to trace recurring justifications and contestations of takings and returns, and the complicity of anthropology, racial science, and professional networks in colonial collecting. It demonstrates the dual role of law and cultural heritage regulation in enabling colonial injustices, and mobilizing resistance thereto. It challenges the argument that takings were acceptable according to the standards of the time. Drawing on the interplay between justice, ethics, and human rights, it develops a theory of entanglement to rethink contemporary approaches. It shows that future engagement requires a reinvention of knowledge systems and relations towards objects, including new forms of consent, provenance research, partnership and a rethinking of the role of museums themselves. It proposes principles of relational cultural justice to confront ongoing historic, legal, and economic entanglements and enable normative transformation.

This book provides a personal view of the European Bronze Age by one of its long-standing scholars. It takes the period as a series of "lives": of people, objects, places and societies, as well as of the Bronze Age itself, and provides an overview of research on the period, covering the latest work as well as fundamental studies from the past. While not intended as a systematic overview, it places up-to-date scholarship before a wider public.

This article argues that anthropology should not avoid studying the world of art and the specialized fields of cultural production. To do this it is necessary to examine the relationship between ethnography, language and social processes, as well as the way in which we make use o four sources (written, oral and visual) in our research. While this is the basic argument of the text, it also moves into a discussion of the sources that are available for the social history of the theater and Brazilian intellectual life from 1940 to 1960: photographs, interviews, reminiscences, biographies, autobiographies as well as books and theater repertories.

"This book explores the ways in which scientific objects are both real and historical. Whether discovered or invented, objects of inquiry broaden and deepen in meaning -- growing more 'real' -- as they become entangled in webs of cultural signficance, material practices, and theoretical derivations. Thus their biographies will matter to anyone concerned with the formation of scientific knowledge and with the reconciliation of ontology and history."--Back cover

In this article the author intend to use an epistemological concept and its categories of description to analyse two specially chosen biographies reflecting diverse postmodern life patterns. Postmodernity, or in fact the postmodern order, refers to the concept of order-making dimensions discussed in the previous article concerning hypermodernity. It is treated there as casual and variable with regard to the category of relations and work, and the only certainty for the individual, in regard to future possibilities or necessities, is the individual's own identity. This article adds the category of resonance to the characteristics of postmodernity, as a synonym for a person's primary entanglement in the world. It is a category of which individuals are increasingly aware, on which they reflect, and which they make an object of their experience.

The article deals with the problematic of sacred objects in museums. It analyzes the political and intellectual reasons for the transformation of museum ethics in Western countries, and provides examples of the difficulties in dealing with sacred objects. The first section of the article summarizes the historical reasons for the marginal position museums had until recently allocated to religion as a living phenomenon. The second and third sections analyze the reasons for the growing presence of religion in Western museums in the last few decades: first, the rethinking of the relationship between indigenous peoples and their heritage within the framework of decolonization; and, second, the epistemological shifts in the social sciences that have shaped a new understanding of "museum pieces" as social agents. The new museum ethics is therefore based on both the principle of respect for the objects themselves and the recognition of indigenous peoples' rights to a living relationship with their heritage, especially with "sensitive materials", such as religious objects and human remains. Nevertheless, implementing these principles often reveals contradictions between the universalist values of museum work, such as the conservation and the access to heritage, and the particularistic logic of religious and ethnic groups. The fourth part of the article provides examples of some of the difficulties encountered by Western museums in exhibiting, storing and repatriating sacred objects, and describes how they have been dealt with. Finally, the conclusion elaborates on the special position of regional museums in Russia's autochthonous republics in rethinking the religion in museum space and in implementing new museum ethics in dealing with sacred objects. ; SCOPUS: ar.j ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

"'Kollektivbiographie' kann vereinfacht bedeuten: 1) die Sammlung und Dokumentation von Biographien und 2) die Methode zur Auswertung dieser Biographien. Kollektivbiographie kann als Hauptmethode, aber auch nur als Teil- und Komplementärmethode in unterschiedlichen thematischen, methodischen und disziplinären Kontexten eingesetzt werden, entsprechend wird sie unterschiedlich definiert und firmiert teilweise unter anderem Namen (zum Beispiel unter 'Prosopographie'). Der erste Teil des Beitrages begibt sich auf Spurensuche nach Kollektivbiographie in Deutschland seit den 1980er Jahren und kann exemplarisch nachweisen, dass sie bis heute in vielfältiger Form diskutiert, verbreitet und eingesetzt wird. Der zweite Teil stellt unter dem Begriff 'Prosopographie' die Anwendung der Kollektivbiographie in den (angelsächsischen) Geschichtswissenschaften vor. Dabei wird der Ansatz von Lawrence Stone, dem 'Klassiker' der modernen Prosopographie, beschrieben und der forschungspraktische Leitfaden des Oxforder 'Prosopography Project' erläutert. Der dritte Teil präsentiert Kollektivbiographie als Forschungsmethode in der Historischen Sozialforschung. Dabei wird - mit Bezug auf New Social History/ Historical Sociology, qualitativer Biographieforschung und quantitativer Lebenslaufforschung - der Stellenwert der Kollektivbiographie dargestellt und die Grundzüge ihrer Forschungsstrategie von der Theorie bis hin zur Statistik entwickelt." (Autorenreferat)

Abstract
The paper explores the flows of artefacts between public and private settings in alternative political and social relations in Mongolia. It investigates sacred places such as Buddhist temples and monasteries as well as museums (which were former temples) and examines movements of objects such as Buddhist figures, sacred books and ethnographic objects. The 'artefact transfers' not only relate to massive movements such as the displacement of sacred objects or deities (burkhan), their transformation into museum objects and the concealing of items underground, but the phrase also implies changes in perception, value and attitudes towards artefacts. Material culture also needed to be fitted into another order due to the process of 'modernisation' and societal transformation in Mongolia. Objects that suddenly appeared ambivalent had to be dealt with in order to conform to new or changing ideologies. Following the 'biographies' and 'efficacy' of artefacts, the authors argue that, through various cultural and economic exchanges in translocal networks, changes of perception and value activate artefact transfers.