Transcending Borders: Objects on the Move

Does the demand for archaeological artefacts in the legal marketplace in Israel increase the looting of archaeological sites in the region? Through the course of investigating this question it became apparent that while consumer demand may be at the heart of the trade in antiquities, the nature and driving forces behind looting are far more complex than is often understood. The motivations for looting involve notions of nationalism, the forces of globalism, conflicting preservation and management plans, colonialism, and long-entrenched traditional practices. It is an examination of this complexity (i.e. the multiple forms of and incentives for looting), which forms the focus of this paper. This is an exploration of the multivocality of the various agents who make it possible for objects to transcend borders.     

超越形态学:列维--斯特劳斯与民间故事分析

在我们周围被发现的、令人尴尬的智力差异背后有一种黑格尔主义的残余,它依然在强迫我们去探索某种潜在的整一性或单一的时代精神.这种倾向在近年来没有其他地方比试图从大量的、非常独特的智力条件中,"发现"(创造)某种单一的结构主义方面更为明显.为了界定某个"结构主义者"的研究领域,人们可以引证许多这样的尝试,但在民俗学界早期努力创造的广义方法论中,最值得注意的可能是阿兰·邓迪斯的方法论.他在1964年的<北美印第安人民间故事形态>一文中,提出了对结构主义的早期看法,赋予了弗拉迪米尔·普洛普、克劳德·列维-斯特劳斯及其追随者的著作以"结构"的特征,并将它们与不同学科门类的广泛领域联系起来:     

Miniature dissonance and the museum space: reconsidering communication through miniaturisation

Miniature objects from non-European contexts have ideological elements which are often overlooked in the museum space because their small size and iconic relations make them difficult to accurately interpret and disrupt curatorial efforts to impose meaning upon them; a situation I term miniature dissonance. This article will examine this phenomenon using three related case studies featuring miniatures from the Northwest Coast of North America. It will consider what might have been misunderstood in these objects and what they might originally have been intended to achieve, followed by an example from a recent Ancient Egyptian exhibition which demonstrates that this problem is both more widespread and problematic than is often recognised. These miniatures disrupt curatorial intentionality in the museum space, and it is only by carefully considering their origins and affordances that they can be adequately and accurately interpreted and displayed.