The UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, signed at the Hague in 1954, is a document that reflects 20th century thinking on the means to safeguard the world's cultural heritage. It is our task to transform it into one that anticipates the challenges of the 21st century. First, then, we should pay homage to those individuals who had the spirit and the resolve to formulate the Convention and its Protocol. Second, we should admit that the Convention's effectiveness has been minimized in the past, largely due to a Euclidean conceptualization of the problem when in fact during war the axioms become spontaneously non-Euclidean, non-linear and highly chaotic. Clearly there is a need to reevaluate its premises in fresh ways, and to strengthen it in the context of the New Age that shall define the future.

“The wear of iron teeth of time...”

“nothing is eternal”

“everything ends up in ashes”

Such poetic locutions have been with us since Biblical and Homeric times. Lately it has become fashionable to clad this commonplace insight in more scientific garb such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics

With the emergence in the 20th century of long-range methods of destruction, museums and galleries have had to develop appropriate measures to protect their collections. The British Museum first took such measures on site in 1914 and followed this by evacuating some of its most valuable objects in 1918. Similar procedures were followed in the Second World War and, despite major damage to the building, no significant items (apart from books) were lost.

With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Britain found herself involved in a European war for the first time in nearly a century. The National Gallery had thus been immune to the possibility of attack by hostile forces, although it is interesting to note that when war was declared, the Gallery had only recently reopened to the public following an attack on a Bellini by a suffragette.

In 1988, the U. S. Congress provided $1.4 million to six Aleut communities in Alaska as restitution for damage done to their churches by U. S. forces stationed in the Aleutians during World War II. The residents of these communities had been forcibly evacuated and interned for up to three years in camps in southeast Alaska where many died. At the request of the Aleuts, restitution to the Orthodox churches was given a special place in the U. S. decision to make reparations. The Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association, a non-profit organization, has been charged by Congress with assessing the damage and estimating the cost of restoration. The assessment project, begun in November 1991, has utilized the expertise of an architect and art conservator to examine structures and church furnishings of these churches and has reached some preliminary conclusions: 1) The stress of travel for those icons and liturgical vessels which accompanied the evacuees was significant and damage related to that travel is evident today; 2) The churches themselves were often targets of vandalism and looting by the American troops; 3) the churches were left without regular maintenance in the harsh climate of the Aleutians for three years; 4) the Aleuts were destitute on their return and could not restore the buildings to their former condition; 5) the results of makeshift repairs in the immediate post-war era are evident today in a general state of deterioriation. The final report to Congress on this project is due in the Spring 1993.

The damage caused during and in the aftermath of the Gulf War to the cultural monuments and heritage of Iraq resulted directly from the bombing. Some of the effects were immediate, the rest were due to delayed reactions to the vibrations. However, the most serious loss to the country took place during the insurgencies immediately after the war was over when nine provincial museums were looted and robbed of their objects. In all some 4000 objects are missing. Although many will have been destroyed during the upheavals, others have begun to appear on the antiquities markets in the West.

My paper is a video presentation, but before I show it, allow me just a few words. My contribution is not a scientific paper. In this video we shall be faced with the facts. Facts are always that starting point in the process of thinking, and thought is the basis of human activity. These facts are given concisely in 25 minutes, which is — frankly — nothing compared to the hours and hours I spent watching the raw documentary material, selecting it, and making the final version of the video that you are about to see.

The purpose of this talk is to give a brief account of the current situation in Croatia—a small country located between the Adriatic sea and the Danube, along the south-eastern spur of the Alps. I would like to begin with some general remarks about the Croatian cultural heritage and the damage that has been inflicted on it by nine months of exceptionally brutal warfare. I will give some rather dry statistics, but it is important to keep in mind that each of these statistics represent an act of appalling vandalism of a kind that has not been seen in Europe for a generation. I will then focus on the specific cases of Dubrovnik and Zadar. Since both of these cities are under the jurisdiction of my Institute I can report about them in some detail from personal experience. Finally I have some concrete proposals for what could be done to mitigate the effects of the damage already caused to cultural monuments by the war in Croatia. Croatia desperately needs immediate international help to preserve its cultural heritage. I will report on some initiatives already under way.

For 1,200 years Cambodia's historic royal complex of Angkor, one of the world's architectural wonders, has survived all threats from man and nature. But the greatest pressures on Angkor have come during the late 20th century, especially the devastation caused by more than two decades of war and civil strife. Now, with increased conservation and restoration efforts initiated by the World Monuments Fund and other international cultural institutions and coordinated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), three new threats have emerged. One is an increase in the looting of the sculptures and bas-reliefs decorating the sides of temples, galleries, and terraces. The second is the lack of a comprehensive, coordinated plan for conservation. The third, with potentially the most destructive results, is the uncontrolled development of the sacred site as a major tourist attraction.

Immovable cultural properties, whether buildings, archeological sites, museums or libraries, are at substantial risk in the event of armed conflict. In many ways, natural disasters pose many of the same threats to such structures as does war. Earthquakes impose horizontal loads on structures, their weak direction, tornadoes and hurricanes impose large substantial over pressures on walls and roves, just as ground shock and air blast from explosions do. Fire spreads when there is both fuel and ignition, regardless of whether the ignition is purposeful or accidental. A clear message from the natural hazards literature is that you cannot do anything during the emergency period that you have not carefully thought through before the emergency. This paper reviews approaches to protection of cultural properties and the existing Hague Convention. It is proposed that a concerted effort be mounted by the professional conservation community to: 1) prepare guides on how to identify and document cultural properties important to the community; 2) descriptive manuals on how to protect cultural properties using easily available materials and techniques; 3) distributed them to the local communities likely to be impacted; and 4) provide limited technical resource teams to stabilize or repair after hostilities.

Previous research suggested that the chemical composition of rock varnish, a micrometer thick Si/AI/Mn/Fe coating, changed predictably through time and so could be used as a chronometer. In particular, the cation ratio, (Ca+K)/Ti, was posited to decrease as the varnish aged. However, many earlier varnish studies were not well documented and were based on chemical analyses now shown to be inaccurate. This paper describes a test and the first direct comparison between two different analytic methods used previously to “cation-ratio date” archeologic and geologic materials. It provides methodology sufficiently detailed for replication of analytical and sampling techniques.

Our analyses of rock varnish from a prehistoric chert quarry in California show that the two principal methods used to “cation-ratio date” rock varnish generate consistently different elemental abundances and are therefore not comparable. Neither analytic method produced a significant time-dependent trend in varnish chemistry, suggesting rock varnish cation ratios are not a reproducible and thus probably not a reliable way to date lithic artifacts.

Dark Earth deposits immediately overlie late Roman urban stratigraphy across northwest Europe, representing the crucial but poorly documented collapse of provincial Roman urbanism. Deficient in artefacts, they have proved recalcitrant to traditional methods of archaeological interpretation. Here, they are used as a vehicle to promote a more integrated, holistic approach to scientific archaeology. This recognises the great potential value of applying a wide range of geoanalytical techniques to the finer-grained matrices that enclose (or, more precisely, grade into) artefacts in archaeological sequences. As this multifaceted approach is time-consuming, deposits chosen for analysis should contain potential answers to profound historical questions. Comparative studies are necessary, in which samples of known age, provenance, environment and mode of deposition outnumber those of a more equivocal nature. Considerable knowledge is required to select the optimal range of complementary techniques for application to a particular suite of materials; this case study outlines the relative merits of analyses for fabric orientation, particle size, micromorphology, bulk geochemistry (ICP), particle geochemistry (microprobe), heavy mineralogy, plant remains (pollen, phytoliths, wood), animal remains, macroscopic artefacts, and radiometric dating. The resulting large bodies of data are best summarised by multivariate analyses (notably ordination algorithms), together with semivariograms for spatial data. Interpretations should take full account of the range of anthropogenic processes and products inherent in archaeological deposits.

Pigment identification and technical analysis of works of art provide the historian and conservator with information that allows a new view of an object. The methods the analyst chooses depends on the nature of the sample and the materials and method expected for the age of the object being examined. Several analytical methods are used frequently in the museum field with great success; these include x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, x-ray powder diffraction methods and optical microscopy. Results from the analysis of pigments in paintings by Derain, Beckmann, El Greco, G. David, and Gentileschi are given. The results include discovery of an unpublished formulation of cobalt violet, example of the use of particle size to change the appearance of color, and the use of x-ray fluorescence to determine artists' palettes without removing samples from the works of art. The study of the El Greco and the Gentileschi show how technical investigations can complement art historical research.

Technical studies were performed on one hundred and seven Chinese copper-alloy sculptures dating from the fifth to the nineteenth centuries A. D. in the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art. X-radiography, stereomicroscopy and metallography were used to determine various physical features; atomic absorption spectroscopy was used to characterize the metal composition. All sculptures were determined to be cast by the lost wax method, and details were tooled by engraving and chasing. Metallographic examination and microprobe analysis showed that the gilding technique used was mercury gilding. Bronzes from the Northern Wei to the Song dynasty are similar in their physical characteristics and alloy type, leaded tin bronze. Beginning in the Ming dynasty, an increase in the amount of zinc is found, both as an impurity in tin bronzes and as a brass alloy constituent.

Stable lead isotope ratios were determined on sixty-four samples taken from sixty of the Buddhist bronze images which were examined and chemically analyzed by Jett and Douglas [preceding paper]. The data were grouped using multivariate techniques and were compared with an accumulated data base of lead isotope measurements on more than 700 ancient Chinese artifacts and more than 200 Chinese and Korean ores. One group of ten images which were all datable to a period of less than one century, Eastern Wei through Sui dynasties, form a nearly unique isotopic group which coincides only with an unusual group of Lengshuichong bronze drums. A second large group of thirty-two isotopically matching images contains almost all, fifteen out of sixteen, of the images attributed to the Northern Wei dynasty. The remaining members of this group are of later date, extending into the Tang dynasty, or are animal figures attributed more generally to the Six Dynasties. This group partially overlaps somewhat the isotope fields of some Western and Eastern Han mirrors and some of the Sackler ritual bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, but appears to have been derived from a different ore source from them. The remaining specimens break up into some very tentatively defined small groups of two to four specimens each and a small residue of four unique, unmatched specimens.

The powdered contents of 17 Late Roman and Byzantine glass vessels used to hold cosmetic eye-paints (kohl) were analyzed. The principal analytical techniques employed were X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry, X-ray fluorescence, and scanning electron microscopy. The materials detected are described, indicating those which may have been used as kohl. Also reported are analytical results from a solid chunk of material surrounding a fragment of a metal rod, also obtained from a kohl vessel.

We have been measuring x-ray diffraction spectra of small samples of layers in cross-sections using a Micro X-ray diffractometer (PSPC/MDG) system since 1988. In measuring with xray diffractometry, the position sensitive proportional counter (PSPC) covers 150 degrees of x-ray diffraction, continuously. The data are accumulated by the multichannel analyser (MCA) and monitored on a CRT during the measurement period. Mounted samples can rotate around three axes. The XRD spectra are very like those from a wide angle goniometer used in powder diffraction. Normally the spatial limits are around 30 microns in diameter, as we have found experimentallly in our samples. We feel this system is very feasible for art and archaeological studies. Some case studies are presented.

The main objective of our research is the development of totally non-destructive methodologies for the investigation of art works. We propose the use of fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS) in the visible and near-infrared region as a tool for the identification of the pigments used in painting. We have considered several representative inorganic artists' pigments (mainly till the Renaissance period); powder X-ray diffractograms and diffuse reflectance spectra in the visible, near-, middle- and far-infrared range were recorded for pure pigments. Then we prepared suitable samples with the same pigments using fresco, tempera and oil techniques. The visible and near-infrared spectra of these samples were recorded using an optical fiber spectrum analyzer; color analysis (chromaticity, dominant wavelength and purity) was also performed. The obtained results were used in the interpretation of the spectra obtained from some paintings collected in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence (Giotto and Luca Signorelli). The pointwise information obtained by FORS analysis was also used to calibrate and tune an image spectroscopy system, based on sequences of band-pass filtered images in the near infrared range.

By a combined use of small area X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (SA-XPS),X-ray induced Auger electron spectroscopy (XAES), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron probe for microanalysis (EPMA), the microchemistry of a group of slags from Tell Afis (North-Western Syria), dating back to Iron Age II (750 B.C.), have investigated. The results show and localize the presence of different iron oxides and hydroxides as well of various glassy and crystalline silicates, whose chemical structure and morphology have determined.

The ethnographic and art historical literature reports the use of vegetable resins on Central African ceramics, specifically those made by the Kongo peoples. The purpose of this investigation was to develop a procedure for determining the nature of decorative coatings generally on African ceramics. The investigation focused on a group of Kongo ceramics. FTIR spectra of known resins were obtained and compared with several samples taken from Kongo ceramics. The ceramics were also examined under U.V. light. This paper discusses the results of the examinations and analysis.