U.S. Cultural Diplomacy and Archaeology: Soft Power, Hard Heritage by Christina Luke, Morag M. Kersel (review)

Christina Luke and Morag Kersel, both with backgrounds in field archaeology, worked for the U.S. Department of State in the early 2000s. Their book, U.S. Cultural Diplomacy and Archaeology: Soft Power, Hard Heritage investigates how U.S. government efforts in cultural diplomacy are practiced through projects that promote the preservation and conservation of archaeological sites and cultural heritage venues in foreign countries. The goal of the book is to “investigate the avenues in which archaeology is used to further US foreign relation and diplomatic goals” (18). Luke and Kersel provide a comprehensive overview and understanding of cultural heritage programs that are supported and funded by the U.S. government’s so-called soft power projects, which assist in promoting and maintaining friendly cross-cultural relations. As someone directly involved in several of the projects they list, I was excited to see this book in print. Most of these projects do not receive the amount of recognition they deserve, such as the Iraqi Cultural Heritage Project, which not only assisted with refurbishments at the Iraq Museum (Figure 1), but also created The Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage (Figure 2). It is refreshing to see them highlighted in Luke and Kersel’s narrative of how they support cultural diplomacy.

Confronting what for the layperson can often be a confusing tangle of U.S. government program names and concepts, Luke and Kersel separate the initiatives into specific chapters, listing the histories and inceptions of the programs. For example, they discuss and critique the Council of American Overseas Research Centres (CAORC), which are foreign research centers dotted across the globe that support U.S. policy in diplomatic relations via cultural heritage programming. Information about the centers is useful, yet they do not fully discuss the history of Orientalism in many of the countries where these centers are located. For example, while the centers do indeed promote international scholarly exchange, care must be taken in postcolonial countries where a history of nonnative scholars guiding research agendas exists. In Iraq alone, large-scale excavations in the early twentieth century under the auspices of Western archaeologists resulted in mass quantities of artifacts shipped to Western museums without local consent. However, as part of their discussion of issues related to obtaining excavation permits, Luke and Kersel do highlight the potential hazards of government expropriation, which they state “often perpetuate the colonial underpinnings” of archaeology (57).

1.

The Iraq Museum. Photograph by Diane C. Siebrandt.

2.

The Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage. Photograph by Diane C. Siebrandt.

Luke and Kersel provide a detailed narrative on pairing different U.S. government departments, such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, with foreign countries in order to curb looting of archaeological sites (Figure 3). They also highlight important projects that assist authorities in the recovery of looted antiquities, such as the U.S. government-funded International Council of Museum’s (ICROM) Red List, which details objects that are most likely to be plundered from sites (Figure 4). The authors tend to support such partnering in the name of promoting positive soft-power diplomacy across cultural lines.

3.

Looted site in southern Iraq. Photograph by Diane C. Siebrandt.

Luke and Kersel provide details about how such U.S. policies function. For example, because a Ministry of Culture does not exist within the U.S. government, the Cultural Heritage Center (CHC), housed within the Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, acts as the de facto cultural entity in the United States. The authors often discuss the image of the U.S. government that is presented to foreign countries and their populations, stating that the work generated by the CHC gives the United States a positive image (81). However, they also critique some...