Description:
Real, Recent, or Replica: Precolumbian Caribbean Heritage as Art, Commodity, and Inspiration is a groundbreaking exploration of authenticity, ownership, and value in the Caribbean's Indigenous past. Bringing together leading scholars of archaeology, anthropology, art history, and museum studies, this interdisciplinary volume examines the growing market for Precolumbian Caribbean artifacts, the rise of sophisticated forgeries, and the enduring appeal of Taíno and other Indigenous artistic traditions. Through case studies spanning museums, private collections, governments, artists, and local communities, the contributors reveal how looting, replicas, cultural tourism, and heritage commerce shape public understandings of the Caribbean past. Essential reading for archaeologists, museum professionals, heritage managers, art historians, and Caribbean scholars, this award-winning volume offers a timely assessment of the challenges and opportunities facing cultural heritage in the twenty-first century.
Review Quotes:
"This important volume explores the practical and ethical challenges of interpreting pre-Columbian Caribbean art and artifacts . . . A must-read for Caribbean archaeologists and museum specialists. Highly recommended." --CHOICE
"Real, Recent, or Replica is an important contribution to the study of the pre-Columbian Caribbean, one of the less-well-known areas of Americanist archaeology, and to the history of art forgery. In the preface and introduction, Ostapkowicz and Hanna provide a highly readable overview of the ethical and practical problems created by the historically close relationships among looters, collectors, dealers, museum curators, and, regrettably, some field archaeologists."
--Journal of Anthropological Research
"An unprecedented exploration of the furtive practices of collecting, faking, and looting as they entangle the scholarly study of Caribbean archaeology and ethnohistory. Local in focus but global in impact, the book has much to teach us about the consequences and unintended consequences of public policy's embrace of cultural heritage."
--Neil Brodie, coeditor of Illicit Antiquities: The Theft of Culture and the Extinction of Archaeology