A history of antiquities ownership in the United States, 1870--1934

This dissertation investigates the relationship between antiquities and property rights during the "golden age" of American museum collecting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While contemporary arguments over cultural property receive a great deal of attention from academics and the general public, few analyses have looked to how competing theories of ownership have historically structured access to archaeological remains and determined licit and illicit actions when appropriating ancient art and antiquities. In exploring how property debates became a regular feature of museum acquisition and archaeological practice, this study looks to the manifold ways that discourses about antiquities evolved into specific cultural policies, how these policies were themselves contested, and what their impact has been upon public institutions and the professionalization of American archaeology. It considers four specific legal regimes governing the ownership of antiquities: U.S. tariff laws that assessed a duty on imported private property; the Antiquities Act of 1906, which established federal ownership over undiscovered antiquities on public domain lands; state laws and local activism concerning Native American artifacts; and trust property overseen by the Office of Indian Affairs. Archaeological remains were subject to varied and frequently conflicting claims in each of these different domains. At the same time, these concerns about ownership extended beyond the possession of artifacts to questions about the pedagogical value and need for collecting archaeological material; the nexus between the public good and scientific prerogatives; and the role of the federal government in maintaining a policy favorable to collecting by cultural institutions at the turn of the twentieth century.