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CONSTRUCTING, COMMODIFYING, AND CONSUMING INVENTED ETHNIC PROVENANCE AMONG ROMANIAN ROMA
Author(s) -
Berta Péter
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
museum anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.197
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1548-1379
pISSN - 0892-8339
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1379.2011.01113.x
Subject(s) - ethnic group , prestige , context (archaeology) , romanian , provenance , politics , materiality (auditing) , history , genealogy , ethnology , sociology , art , anthropology , political science , archaeology , law , aesthetics , linguistics , petrology , philosophy , geology
This article deals with contemporary examples of fraud in the trade of silver beakers and tankards that are defined as valuable prestige goods by two R oma groups living in central R omania―the G abor R oma and the C ărhar R oma. It demonstrates how some G abor R oma construct an invented ethnic provenance for silver objects purchased on the E uropean antiques market to sell them for profit to wealthy C ărhar R oma as precious G abor family heirlooms. I discuss the techniques of fabricating a history of ownership for these pieces (symbolic patina), aging their surfaces (material patina), and manipulating the context of these transactions. The analysis reveals how the politics of object authenticity function and how the artificially created ethnic provenance attributed to commodities has been converted into financial gain in socialist and postsocialist R omania.