Glossary Collecting and the antiquities trade
1970 UNESCO Convention
Also called: UNESCO 1970
The 1970 international treaty on preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of cultural property; its year is the trade's usual provenance benchmark.
Adopted in Paris in November 1970 and in force from 1972, the Convention commits the states that join it to control the export of cultural property and to cooperate against illicit traffic. It binds governments, and it is not retroactive: it applies to objects illicitly removed after it came into force for the states concerned. Cyprus ratified it in 1979, the United States implemented it in 1983 and the United Kingdom accepted it in 2002.
Its year has also become an ethical benchmark. Museums that follow the codes of ICOM and the main museum associations, and many dealers and auction houses, aim to show that an object was out of its country of origin before 1970 or was exported lawfully afterwards. For Cypriot material the date sits close to the Turkish invasion of 1974, so buyers also look for a documented history before 1974 (Collecting Cypriot Antiquities Today).
Related terms
- US-Cyprus Memorandum of Understanding
An agreement between the United States and Cyprus, first signed in 2002, restricting US imports of designated Cypriot archaeological and Byzantine material.
- Export licence
An official permit allowing an antiquity to leave its country of origin; in Cyprus, issued by the Department of Antiquities from 1935.
- Unprovenanced
Describes an object whose find-spot is unknown, and often whose earlier ownership history is undocumented as well.
- Repatriation
The return of cultural objects to their country or community of origin, whether through legal action, negotiation or a voluntary gift.
Where it appears
- Looting in Occupied Northern Cyprus after 1974
- Collecting Cypriot Antiquities Today: Law, Provenance and Due Diligence
- UNESCO 1970 and the Hague Convention: The International Law on Cypriot Antiquities
- Antiquities from the Sea: Amphorae, Wrecks and Divers off Cyprus
- Autocephalous Church of Cyprus v. Goldberg: The Kanakaria Case in the American Courts
- Documenting a Lawful History: How to Show a Cypriot Antiquity Left the Island Lawfully
- EU and UK Rules for Cypriot Antiquities: Export, Import and Return in Europe Today
- Heirs and Old Collections: Where the Cypriot Antiquities on Today's Market Come From
- The 1974 Presumption: Why Cypriot Antiquities Are Treated as Guilty Until Proven Innocent
- The Legal Export of Cypriot Antiquities
- The Trade in Cypriot Antiquities since 1996: The Twenty-First-Century Market
- Buying Back: Recovering Cypriot Antiquities and Church Art by Purchase Instead of in Court
and 10 more compendium pages