Every country in the world has a different definition of what Cultural Property” is to them. The term is typically expansive: few countries try to limit what they determine to be culturally significant to them. Exceptions occur due to either a dramatic shift in public perception of art, such as the banning of “degenerate” art in Germany in the 1930’s or the deliberate governmental destruction of a monumental, i.e. the 1999 bombings of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Thus what has been deemed culturally important to preserve has shifted and grown over time.

Cultural Property in the U.S. has been defined as a multitude of objects and monuments. Within the U.S., cultural property can be defined on both a state and federal level, but for the interest of this site, federal law, as the overarching definition used by many will be used. This means that cultural property as defined by the U.S. government must be examined through several of the major cases linked to the protection of cultural property:

• American Antiquities Act (16 USC 431-433, 8 June 1906)
• Historic Sites Act (16 USC 461, 21 August 1935)
• The National Stolen Property Act (1943)
• The UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970, ratified 1973)
• Pre-Columbian Monumental and Architectural Sculpture and Murals Statute (1972)
• US v McClain (1979)
• Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (drafted 1983, ratified 1987)
• US v Schultz (2003)

And Federal acts of Preservation

• Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) (1979)
• Abandoned Shipwreck Act (1987)
• Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1993)

These cases and laws outline the concept of US cultural property laws on their importation: As set forth in the Implementation Act, material of archaeological interest must be at least 250 years old to be covered, excluding state laws that redefine a specific object or artifact. As a result of the ‘McClain’ (Pre-Columbian) and ‘Schultz’ (Egyptian) cases, the U.S. has effectively agreed to enforce any the laws of any country with a claim to an object they have vested ownership of, as long as it can be proven that the object in question left the country’s borders after a declaration of intent to vest all ownership of antiquities has been made.

• State Laws