Ivory as Cultural Document: The Crushing Burden of Conservation

Efforts to stop the international ivory trade and save the affected elephants have increasingly emphasized public ivory crushes of confiscated tusks and carved works. While this and other efforts to involve the public in conservation are commendable, they have a burdensome side. First, African cultural ivories, the artists who made them, and the people who used them may be scapegoated in a misplaced desire to identify perpetrators and hold them responsible for elephant loss. Second, simpler but authentic cultural ivories may remain unidentified and accidentally destroyed. Last, even seemingly negligible tourist art and fakes hold cultural information and deserve individual photographic records for future research. This paper examines the cultural value encoded in select African ivory objects made for small-scale societies, major kingdoms, and foreign markets to demonstrate the value African societies have for the elephant and its products in the hope that institutions and federal agencies can work together to preserve these cultural documents.