[Jedd]

> Are there any real world situations where it’s confusing as to who they would be returned to?

Yes, many.

Artifacts whose creation predates the current dominant culture in a region (assuming nation state borders and names have morphed over the time), especially when that contemporary culture actively rejects those earlier cultures, are a prime example.

The Bamiyan Buddhas are a great example - or at least lead to a follow-up question to your question. If, say, the British Museum had transported artifacts of similar historical value (beauty, etc, whatever criteria you want to use) decades or centuries ago, but the ruling regime there now demanded their return, whilst making no secret of their intent to destroy those artifacts upon receipt -- what's would you advise the British Museum?

Beyond the dubious nature of geographical happenstance implying inarguable custodianship - another example of nuance to counter your 'everything is black and white' position would be around artifacts from pre-partition India (Pakistan), and who should own those, or more recently Yugoslav-era artifacts. There are myriad examples like these, of course.

Again, if you're happy to ignore the complexity and potential dubiousness of ancestry claims, or orthogonal religious / cultural values, etc - you're back to a geographical claim - 'there are people in roughly the same region as some different people, some time ago'.

[lostlogin]

I argue that they should go back to where they were found.

I’m sure there are some examples where the location of the find is unknown, and yes, that would be a difficulty.

A lot of the heat would leave the debate if the blindingly obvious examples looting were resolved - The Elgin Marbles.

[Jedd]

> I argue that they should go back to where they were found.

Yes, again you're conflating where with who, and that was the crux of my questions to you in the previous post.

Unknown source locations - are a bit of a (minor) edge case I think, but aren't a major problem.

I have no strong opinions on Elgin Marbles, and I haven't been following any debate around that one. In the abstract, I suspect resolving one claim of ownership wouldn't assist in resolving much of 'the debate', but as I say, a bit ignorance on that specific example you cite.