Books: Archaeology, Cultural Property and the Military

This collection of essays ranges over several centuries of war and its impact on art and archaeology. At its heart are two very contemporary questions: why was so much cultural property destroyed in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and how can such irretrievable loss be prevented in future?

The answer to the first, the authors suggest, is lack of awareness at all levels of the military, so it follows that the second question can be addressed by educating those who plan and participate in military action.

The problem with this analysis is that, as Lawrence Rothfield demonstrates in his 2009 book The Rape of Mesopotamia, it wasn’t so much that they didn’t know, they just weren’t interested.

The authors’ rubric seems that, yes, it was all a terrible foul-up, but everyone has learned important lessons and we have better procedures to make sure it won’t happen again. However, the evidence in the book hardly supports such optimism.

Why have the US and UK, the principal external powers responsible for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, still not ratified the Hague Convention and its two protocols, which oblige military powers to protect cultural property during armed conflict? The US military is so concerned that it committed all of $60,000 in 2010 to international cultural resources cooperation.

Most galling of all is that we used to do it so much better. One chapter provides a riveting account of the measures taken by the western allies during the liberation of Europe in the second world war to safeguard and repatriate art stolen and hidden by the Nazis.

The monuments officers, immensely resourceful academics embedded in the Allied Expeditionary Force, discovered, documented, protected and returned thousands of art objects to museums (the stolen property of individuals is still being sorted out today). Their ability to improvise was spectacular. Works of art were protected in transit using German sheepskins, rubber boots and gas capes.

What gives this book an edge is that, like the Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos, it is written by people who have rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in to protect cultural property where the cavalry rode roughshod. It left me deeply respectful of their achievements despite the odds.

These attributes are exemplified in the editor, Laurie Rush, who has won the trust and recognition of the military and archaeological establishments. The case is made for archaeologists imported into the military to be given sufficient training and rank to have clout, “sadly very necessary in an organisation so driven by, and so deferential to, rank”.

The precedent exists for medics and lawyers. Akin to the monuments officers of the second world war, such specialists have one mission only: to protect cultural property.

The last chapter discusses the ethics of collaborating with the military, particularly where the writer disagreed strongly with the invasion of Iraq. She decided that a greater good would be served by contributing her expertise than remaining above the fray.

The book is enlivened by personal narratives that describe the realities of working in hostile territory. Airman First Sergeant Pinckney, a conservator with archaeological experience, took on the task, beyond his military duties, to document and safeguard the sites at the US airbase at Kirkuk.

The obstacles he had to surmount included a commander who told him “I need a first sergeant… not a first archaeologist”; archaeological kit that went astray in the chaotic US army mailing system; and scorpions, venomous spiders and snakes that inhabit the nooks and crannies of archaeological sites.

As one author points out: “If war destroys a group’s past and related cultural memory, even in part, the loss is often felt across the globe… Standing by and doing nothing… is no longer an option.”

Whether the architects of war will learn from the lessons of history remains an open question. This book at least gives the military slightly less excuse for institutionalised, brutish amnesia.

Tristram Besterman is a freelance adviser and writer on museums and culture