Cultural Objects and Their Contexts

The papers in this special issue offer different theoretical and empirical considerations in relation to the transnational traffic in cultural objects. They are the result of a call for papers sent out by Trafficking Culture, an ERC-funded initiative that gathers and analyses evidence on the scale and nature of the global trade in looted cultural objects. More details on the topic are available on our website at traffickingculture.org. We would like to express our thanks to the journal for inviting us to organise this special issue, and to the editorial team who have worked with us in the process, especially Ernesto Savona and Giulia Berlusconi. In this introduction to the volume, we will set out some of the parameters and background to the current criminal justice debate on looting and traffic of cultural objects, while drawing out some common themes in the papers which follow.

Cultural objects are objects whose monetary value derives from their cultu ...