Cultural Heritage in the Crosshairs ― Protecting Cultural Property During Conflict

The protection of cultural property during times of armed conflict and social unrest has been an on-going challenge for military forces throughout the world even after the ratification and implementation of the 1954 Hague Convention and its two Protocolsby participating nations. This volume provides a series of case studies and "lessons learned" to assess the current status of Cultural Property Protection (CPP) and the military, and use that information to rethink the way forward. The contributors are all recognized experts in the field of military CPP or cultural heritage and conflict, and all are actively engaged in developing national and international solutions for the protection and conservation of these non-renewable resources and the intangible cultural values that they represent.

Joris D. Kila, PhD (Amsterdam, 2012) is researcher at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Culture and History, reserve Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Netherlands Army and holds degrees from Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam. He undertook cultural rescue missions in Iraq, Macedonia, Egypt and Libya and is affiliated with several heritage organizations. He is Chair of the International Military Cultural Resources Working Group IMCuRWG and has written numerous publications on heritage protection, including Heritage under Siege. Military Implementation of Cultural Property Protection Following the 1954 Hague Convention (2012)James A. Zeidler, Ph.D.1984, is Senior Research Scientist at Colorado State University, where he serves as Associate Director for Cultural Resources in the Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands (CEMML). He has been involved in Cultural Resource Management on US military installations since 1992 and has provided cultural heritage awareness training to US troops deployed in the Middle East. He is a founding member of the DoD Combatant Command Cultural Heritage Action Group (CCHAG) and is also an expert member of the International Committee for Archaeological Resource Management (ICAHM). His current research involves expanding Cultural Property Protection awareness training and planning for DoD Full Spectrum Operations on a global scale and he is also the chief archaeological consultant for a major heritage tourism project in the Jama River Valley of coastal Ecuador.Contributors: Karl Von Habsburg, Joris D. Kila, Michael Pesendorfer, James A. Zeidler, John Valainis, Michael Hallett, Benjamin A. Roberts, Cheryl White, Thomas Livoti, Benjamin Isakhan, Matthieu J. Murdock, Carrie A. Hritz, Friedrich Schipper, Caroline A. Sandes, Mirjam Hoijtink, Marc Balcells, Richard Osgood