Dr John Carman 'Governable by Law'? A challenge to the regulation of heritage

According to Henry Cleere, writing in 1989, ‘heritage is governed by legislation’. And law has been the main device for managing heritage since at least the late 19th century: today, every country in the world has some law to regulate its heritage.

This talk will outline how laws work to regulate heritage and what they achieve in doing so.

It will go on to consider how heritage is made, what heritage is ultimately for and how these relate to the application of laws. The result is an argument against law as a tool of management and control. Practical alternatives to control and management will be proposed and their implications for the future of heritage management outlined.

Biography

Dr John Carman is an Hon. Associate Professor of the University of Birmingham, previously Senior Lecturer in Heritage Valuation at the (then) Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage. Since obtaining his PhD in Archaeological Heritage Management from the University of Cambridge in 1993, has spoken and written widely on heritage and, with his partner Patricia Carman, on Conflict Archaeology. He is currently co-Editor of Archaeologies: journal of the World Archaeological Congress and Chair of the Heritage Advisory Committee of the European Association of Archaeologists. Among his major works on heritage are Valuing Ancient Things: archaeology and law (Leicester University Press, 1996), Archaeology and Heritage: an introduction (Continuum, 2002), Against Cultural Property: archaeology, heritage and ownership (Duckworth 2005), Archaeological Resource Management: an international perspective (CUP, 2015) and Archaeological Practice as Politics and Ethics (Springer, 2024).