More than 48 shipwrecks have been illicitly salvaged - and the figure may be much higher. Museums can play a key role in the protection of these wrecks, alongside strategic recovery and legislative steps.
The Big Banana, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, 2015.
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Australia has more than 200 Big Things, from the heritage-listed Pineapple to a giant Captain Cook. What are we to do with these structures as they age and decay? And should we be building new ones?
The pyramids of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt.
Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
The belief that ancient Egyptians needed help from supernatural beings to built the Giza pyramids relies, unavoidably, on racism and colonial attitudes.
As museum culture increasingly drifts into private ownership, we need to keep a watchful eye on those shaping our cultural landscape
A handout aerial image made available by the Combined Joint Task Force shows the destroyed remains of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri.
EPA/Combined Joint Task Force Handout
The Great Mosque of Mosul - with its iconic leaning minaret - appeared on one of Iraq’s banknotes. Its destruction by the Islamic State is an act of great symbolic importance.
Chinese ceramics recovered from the 9th century Belitung shipwreck in Indonesia, now held at the Asian Civilisations Museum (Singapore)
ArtScience Museum Singapore
Archaeologists this week found that more than half of of HMAS Perth, a WWII wreck in Indonesia, has disappeared. It’s now a race to protect the millions of other wrecks and sunken cities lying under the oceans.
Murujuga, or the Burrup Peninsula, is home to over a million rock artworks. But as concern grows about the impact of industrial pollution on the art, the WA government continues to play down the area’s heritage value.
A 2002 pipeline spill in Cohasset, Minnesota which released 6,000 barrels of crude oil.
mpcaphotos/flickr
An anthropologist of the American West argues that protecting nature and our cultural heritage are good for business but few recognize how they are threatened by ‘jobs-creating’ oil pipelines.
What sacred sites have been damaged by The North Dakota Access Pipeline? We can’t really know for certain – and our legal system is partly to blame.
The 1,200 year old Umayyad Mosque – also known as the Great Mosque of Aleppo – lost its minaret (on left) in 2013 after continued heavy gunfire between rebels and Syrian government forces.
Reuters
It is important to prosecute militants who destroy antiquities. But ‘everyday’ development - from dams flooding towns to the impact of mining on Indigenous rock art – does vastly more damage to heritage than war.
The ruins of the city Cyrene, an ancient Greek and Roman city near present-day Shahhat in Libya.
Mahir Alawami/Shutterstock
Hair has long been modified for aesthetic and other ends. But skewed power structures have meant that women, particularly women of colour, have borne the brunt of stereotyping and prejudice.
Repatriation of cultural heritage is being debated at a time of mass migration – is heritage more important to countries that increasingly cannot be defined by their populations?
Archaeologists on the front lines.
Jonathan Cohen/Binghamton University
Nina M. Versaggi, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Cultural resource management archaeologists don’t choose where they dig. Instead they identify, evaluate and preserve cultural heritage sites in locations slated for development.