Benjamin Westwood (Instituto Universitario Europeo, Firenze, Italy)

Though adhering to a similar pattern of governance as other British imperially expropriated regions across the globe, the Libyan provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (following the capitulation of Axis forces in North Africa in 1942-3) differed in that the British Military Administration (BMA; 1942-51) was organised not through the Colonial Office of the British Government, but by the War Office. Similarly, when attempting the establishment of a more formalised approach to the protection of “Treasures of Art and History”, in effect systems of cultural heritage management in occupied/conflict regions, Leonard Woolley expressly envisaged such undertakings as working only within a military context with military personnel, despite the ‘civilian’ approach adopted by the Americans.

Archaeological practitioners within the British military immediately recognised the need to wrest methodological control from the systems of Italian fascist excavation and ‘release’ archaeological interpretation from the narrow strictures of the policies of Romanita. Yet they could only do so by operating within a similar occupational context which, though perhaps not so vehemently expressed, was undoubtedly possessed of a colonial determinism that causally related the perceived overall positive ‘civilizing’ influences of Roman and British imperial traditions. What emerges from the study of British military, and other documentation of the period is a series of mostly ad hoc methodological approaches developed within the framework of a military occupation, to give mixed results: in Cyrenaica British pique at accusations of vandalism and looting made by Italian propaganda agencies during (brief) previous occupations of the area, ensured that archaeological sites of interest were apparently secured and guarded with relative speed (as per Woolley’s recommendations, from his desk in the War Office!); in Tripolitania however, monumental Roman architecture was in various ways militarily reoccupied, used for target practice and for the purposes of troop entertainment, apparently saved only from further degradation by the accidental archaeological presence of a certain Lt-Col. Mortimer Wheeler.

It is these seeming regional contrasts, with regard to methodological militarism in heritage management and the impact upon the new research framework that was created, that this paper will seek to address. Though much research has previously been focused upon the study of archaeology and colonialism prior to the outbreak of World War II, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the ensuing period that witnessed a transition in heritage management from Italian colonial governance, to occupation under the British Military Administration. Though it is understood that the period, particularly post-conflict, saw the ‘opening up’ of the region’s past to global archaeological study, the processes by which the past was used to define roles of both occupier and the occupied, and the discrepant experiences implied within such dualistic simplicitudes, have not been subject to critical examination.