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Style Guide

Style Guide for Contributions

The contribution form allows members of the public to contribute information on antiquities repatriations to MOLA's dataset. If your contribution is published, you will be credited with the entry.

This style guide offers guidance on how data should be entered by contributors. All contributions are peer reviewed, and only those meeting our standards will be considered for publication. The more closely contributors follow these guidelines, the easier the peer review process will be.

Before you contribute an object or collection, please confirm the following:

• The object is an antiquity or ethnographic material, i.e. was created more than 100 years ago.
• The object was returned to its country of origin after 1950.
• You have at least one reliable source of information about the object and its repatriation.
• You have searched MOLA to confirm it is not already in our public collection.

General Guidelines

• Every repatriation case will have missing information, so please enter as much reliable information as you can and leave unknown fields blank. 
• All data contributed should be supported by a source that is linked and publicly available. If you have information that is not publicly available, you can upload these records for our peer review team. 
• The Research Notes field may be used for explanations of key research data that doesn’t belong in one of the other categories.
• Repatriated objects can be entered as a group of objects (rather than entered individually) when they are numerous and have the same or highly similar ownership history.
• MOLA uses the American spelling of words (e.g. organization, not organisation).
• All currency should be displayed in USD, alongside original currency. 
• Use numerical digits for numbers higher than ten (i.e. zero through ten, 11-20 and so on).
• People may be involved in many categories, but they should be placed in the most appropriate category.
• Specify between looted and stolen objects in the appropriate field.

Controlled Vocabularies 

Certain fields (such as Object Type, Country of Origin and others) contain controlled vocabularies, which allow us to collect data consistently via a drop down menu. Many of these are based on the Getty's Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) hierarchy.

When selecting from a drop down for your submission, please choose the most appropriate field from the list, even if it is not a perfect match. Select terms from above the dashed line (-----) in the drop-down menu. If none of the fields apply, choose "Other" and we will consider adding an additional field. 

When entering information about a group of objects, you can select all applicable fields or select "Various".

Case Summary

A narrative summary of the history of an object and the people who moved it, including what is known about its discovery, its path through the market, the key individuals and institutions involved, and the reasons for its return.

When referring to individuals, please include their full name and a descriptor of their role the first time they are mentioned.

Provenance Summary

A chronological list of events in the object's ownership history.

If available, you can use the museum's structured provenance entry with attribution to the source (noting any information that later proves untrue).

If no structured provenance is available, please format as:

[Date 1]: brief sentence for event;

[Date 2]: brief sentence for event;

[Date 3]: brief sentence for event. 

Object Title

Short description of object. Include extra information such as dates in parentheses at the end.

For example:

Sumerian Statue of King Entemena of Lagash (2nd Millennium BCE)

Object Type

When selecting Object Type for your submission, please choose the closest category, or leave blank. If applicable, we will add additional Object Type categories to the file during peer review. Include details about the object, such as additional types, in Case Summary.

Dates

All ancient dates are considered approximate; use "circa" if needed (rather than approx. or c.). You may include a date range. Use BCE and CE to indicate common era.

For modern dates, use the more precise month/day/year as available.

E.g.

400 BCE

1st Century CE

December 11, 2014

Auction Details

Include available details on the auction sale. For example: 

Location of the auction house branch: Christie’s, New York

Sale Title: "The Lahiri Collection: Indian and Himalayan Art, Ancient and Modern," Sale 12255

Date of auction(s): March 15, 2016

Lot number: 62

Estimated value: USD 200,000 - 300,000

Auction Realized Price

Include original price and currency and a USD value in brackets. 

GBP 240,000 (USD 311,981)

To calculate the currency conversion, please use Oanda.

Proper names

For institutions, please use the full proper name used at the time. For example: 

Law Enforcement:

• United States Customs Service (until March 2003)
• United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) (since March 2003)
• United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
• Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)
• Italian Carabinieri Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (TPC)
• INTERPOL (not Interpol)
• United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY)
• United States Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE), formerly the US Customs Service
• Manhattan District Attorney's Office

Museums:

• J. Paul Getty Museum (not The Getty)
• The Iraq Museum, Baghdad (not the National Museum of Iraq, which is its informal name)
• The Canadian Museum of History (not the Museum of Man or Canadian Museum of Civilization, the institution's previous names) 

Countries:

• Türkiye (not Turkey)
• United States of America
• United Kingdom

People:

• Leonardo da Vinci (not just DaVinci)
• Charles de Gaulle (not De Gaulle)

Tip: It can be helpful to consult the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN).

Expert Review

If you are naming someone in Expert Review, please include any relevant publications in the Sources field.

Supporting Images and Documents

Please email any supporting images or documents to MOLA@achillesresearch.org noting the object name in the subject field. 

Our policy is to not show images of human remains; instead, please use images that refer to the case which were published with the consent of the receiving nation. This may be an image of the repatriation from community media, or from a museum exhibit after the repatriation. A representative image is acceptable.

Sources

All data contributed should be cited to a reliable source. These may include primary sources (such as court records, museum records and dealer catalogs) or secondary sources (such as media reports, books or academic journals).

If the sources are available online, please provide a stable URL when possible (i.e. a link archived by Internet Archive).

If sources are not available online, please provide a full citation or upload the source document.

Please provide the title of the resource in Italics, along with a live hyperlink.

Citation and Attribution

All contributed work is expected to be the writing of the contributor, with proper quoting and credit to source material. 

Peer Review

All contributed work will be peer reviewed by a MOLA team member for original work and fulsomeness of the record. The peer review process is collaborative, and peer reviewers may be in touch for clarification; please leave an email where you may be reached. 

Style Guide prepared for MOLA by Katherine Davidson, 2024.