From the Mayan Machaquila Stele to Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep's Head: United States Courts' Enforcement of Foreign National Patrimony Laws after United States v. Schultz
![handle is hein.journals/hastlj56 and id is 779 raw text is: Notes
From the Mayan Machaquila Stele to Egyptian
Pharaoh Amenhotep's Head: United States
Courts' Enforcement of Foreign National
Patrimony Laws After United States v. Schultz
KAVITA SHARMA*
[T]he demand for cultural artifacts has resulted in the irremedial
destruction of archaeological sites and articles, depriving the situs
countries of their cultural patrimony and the world of important
knowledge of its past.'
INTRODUCTION
Sweat dripped down my face. My hands and knees were covered in
mud. It was hot and I was tired. I should not be here. My supervisor did
not think I was physically fit enough to make the journey with all my
equipment, but obstinacy would not let me quit. I had been climbing for
two hours up a steep rocky hill trying to find the trenches and remains of
a British fort used to fend off German troops during World War I in East
Africa. I was in Taita in the Tsavo region of Kenya, near the Tanzanian
border.' On my way to the trenches I came across a small, shallow cave
filled with skulls. Our ethnographic interviews indicated that
Agropastoral Taita, until recently, would disinter the skulls of their dead
* J.D. Candidate, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, 2005. This Note was
inspired by the archaeological and ethnographic research I performed in Kenya in 2002 under Dr.
Chapurukha Kusimba's supervision during a one year internship at the Field Museum of Natural
History in Chicago. I would like to thank Senior Notes Editor, David Ward, for pushing me to write
the best note possible. I would like to also thank adjunct U.C. Hastings professor, Karl Christiansen,
my reluctant mentor and friend, for his helpful comments. Most importantly, I would like to thank
Sandy and Curren for encouraging me to write this Note when I was feeling a little sad during a
dreary, snowy spring break.
i. S. REP. No. 97-564, at 23 (1982), reprinted in 1982 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4078,4100.
2. Tsavo is famous for its man-eating lions that attacked railroad workers in 1898. They were
featured in the 1996 movie THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS (Paramount Pictures 1996).
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