Cultural Heritage and Museums Lecture Series Talk by Dr.Lynn Meskell: Engineering Internationalism UNESCO’s Victory in Nubia

April 9, 2018

In 1955 Egypt and Sudan appealed for international support to save the sites and monuments of ancient Nubia, an area to be flooded by construction of the Aswan Dam. Inspired by idealism and set amidst the Cold War, the Nubian Monuments Campaign represents UNESCO’s utopian desires for world citizenship and global heritage. UNESCO embraced large-scale and transnational archaeology, bringing together archaeological research and a technocratic conservation agenda. While only fleeting, and not entirely successful, this foray into field archaeology would mark both archaeology’s apogee and demise at UNESCO.