Böcker av Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin

Cultural artefacts, such as those kept and trafficked between art dealers, private collectors and museums, have increasingly become localized in a 'Bermuda triangle' of colonialism, looting and the art (black) market, with their re-emergence resulting in disputes about ownership and claims for return. Taking the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property as a starting point, this book explores how highly valued cultural goods are traded and negotiated among diverging parties and their interests. Against the backdrop of international conventions and their implementation, individual cases are examined from a bottom-up perspective, with contributions from anthropologists, lawyers, historians and archaeologists.

The ceremonial houses of the Abelam people (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea), rank as architectual masterpieces. This book offers a unique documentation of the architecture of the different styles of ceremonial houses according to region, their mode of constuction and the impressice facade paintings. It goes on to explain the social networks responsible for the construction and maintenance, and crucial agents of social information. The author presents an extensive description and analysis of Abelam society at a time when the people were still building ceremonial houses, staging initiations and sacrificing pigs.