A four-tier approach to the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conﬂict Peter G. Stone ∗ This vitally important article sets out the obstacles and opportunities for the protection of archaeological sites and historic buildings in zones of armed conﬂict. Readers will not need to be told that modern munitions are devastating and sometimes wayward, nor that cultural heritage once destroyed cannot simply be rebuilt. The author makes a vivid case for the role of respect for the past in mitigating hostility and so winning the peace as well as aiding the victory, and guides us through the forest of players. Agencies so numerous, so obscure and so often ineffective might prompt the response ‘a plague on all your acronyms’. All the more important, then, that the author and his associates continue their campaign and are supported by everyone who believes that cultural property has a value that lies beyond sectional interests. Keywords: cultural property, heritage, war, conﬂict The legal basis It seems inevitable that armed conﬂict will have a detrimental impact on cultural property. The mitigation of such impact has been discussed for millennia (Miles 2011) and more recently, building on the 1863 Lieber Code produced during the American Civil War, the international community has attempted to limit such damage through treaties and conventions (e.g. see Boylan 2002). Currently the primary piece of international legislation relating to cultural property protection (CPP) during conﬂict is the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conﬂict and its two protocols of 1954 and 1999 (hereafter the 1954 Hague Convention). CPP is also now accepted more broadly as an obligation codiﬁed as part of international humanitarian law (IHL), in particular the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (Articles 53 and 85[4][d]) and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Articles 8[2][b][ix] and 8[2][e][iv]) (and see Toman 1996; Hensel 2007; Gerstenblith 2009). IHL also stresses that occupying forces should not withdraw until there are competent and effective authorities to whom governance can be handed over. No-one implies that CPP in times of armed conﬂict is easy (e.g. see Bevan 2006; Yahya 2008) but the responsibility of belligerents to include it in their planning, under IHL, is unequivocal. * International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University, 18–20 Windsor Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK (Email: peter.stone@ncl.ac.uk) C  Antiquity Publications Ltd. ANTIQUITY 87 (2013): 166–177 http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/087/ant0870166.htm 166