The rock art of the Côa valley,Portugal: Significance,conservation and management

Abstract

The Côa river valley is the largest open-air Palaeolithic art site currently known. Some 150 decorated panels have already been found, spread along 17km. The whole complex would have been submerged under 100m of water if construction of the large Foz Côa dam, begun in 1992, had been allowed to continue. The dam project was halted in 1995 and a 200km² archaeological park is being established in this area, which is now legally protected at the highest level as a National Monument. Public access to selected sites is organized through four-wheel drive. tours of groups of eight people accompanied by guides appropriately trained in archaeology and rock art studies. Visitor Centres have been set up in restored traditional houses located in the villages around the periphery of the park. A Museum of Rock Art and Archaeology and associated research facilities is to be established at the site of the now abandoned dam.     

Twenty-First Annual Meeting,Ipswich

Abstract

Lodge Farm is a stone first-floor hall house of the early fifteenth century built for Henry V or VI. Documentary sources suggest that it was the residence of the head park keeper, warrener and forester of Kingston Lacy manor.

Refurbishment of the building in 1986–9 was accompanied by a full archaeological and photographic survey. Archaeological excavation, in advance of underpinning, revealed archaeological features below the foundations. Ditches and post-holes contained pottery dating to the Early Iron Age. Two lengths of ditch, separated by a causeway, are interpreted as part of a deer park boundary. The fillings of the deer-park ditches contained building debris of thirteenth- to fifteenth-century-date, probably from an earlier lodge. A dump of fallow deer antlers within the north ditch filling was dated by radiocarbon analysis to A.D. 1325–1415 A.D. at I sigma.

A study of documentary sources shows Lodge Farm to be an important building within the hunting land of the medieval manor of Kingston Lacy which, in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, was associated with rabbit farming.     

A hyperreal first-place: Portugal dos Pequenitos theme park and the narrative of origins

Abstract

This article analyses a nation-theme park in Portugal. Located in Coimbra and built in the 1940s, when Portugal was a colonial empire and was under the rule of a right wing dictatorship, the park was designed as a pedagogical device for children to learn about the nation. In the park, the whole of the nation was represented by miniature replicas of buildings representing European Portugal and its overseas territories. Seventy-five years after its construction and with little changes to its material structures, this theme park is the most visited tourist attraction in Coimbra. This paper presents the result of ethnographic work carried out with Portuguese visitors to the park so as to understand the affect the place has over Portuguese visitors. The work undertaken with the latter has allowed to identify a narrative of ‘firstness’ that constructs the park as a hyper-real first-place by Portuguese visitors.     

The emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia: a meandering story

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia, Canada. The story told follows paths not dissimilar from how one might observe children on a walk to the park. While the park is the destination, it is the journey to the park, of picking up pebbles, looking at flowers, and finding sticks, that enlivens and binds the journey. Through our consideration of stories from a number of outdoor programs, we weave patterns that join their emergence and consider how their stories might sustain and encourage educational action.     

The unification of archaeological sites of Athens: The birth of an archaeological park?

Abstract

Recently, there has been a growing trend to present archaeological resources in the form of archaeological parks. These are an innovative way of presenting vast archaeological sites that contain a number of monuments, as a single entity, using components of the environment as interpretation features and creating an ‘invented’ integrity of the landscape. Even though the overall concept of an archaeological park emerged in Scandinavia at least three decades ago, only recently has it taken on a wider character and been applied to a variety of archaeological sites. But no clear criteria exist for them.

The current project of the Unification of the Archaeological Sites of Athens involves creating an archaeological park that includes most features considered essential for a park of this kind. However, the special characteristics of Athens (the over-built urban landscape, environmental pollution, and the mystical relationship between the ancient and modern cities), give the future park a rather individual character.     

The Big Buddha of Hong Kong: an accidental Buddhist theme park

ABSTRACT

The Tian Tan Buddha is the core of a tourism site on Lantau Island, Hong Kong, around which a cable car ride, the Po-Lin monastery and its museum, and the village of Ngong Ping have come to comprise an eclectic set of tourism nuclei that ‘accidentally’ became the ‘Buddhist theme park’ of Hong Kong due to the spatial juxtaposition in an isolated site of these disconnected and even dissonant components built at different times by different jurisdictions. The first objective of this article is to explore the developmental process of a religious site into a theme park of sort through a lengthy process filled with contestation and manipulations. The history-dependent and erratic nature of this process validates the notion of ‘accidental’ theme park used here. It is shown that over time, the Big Buddha went from being a Buddhism-themed leisure site to being generally perceived and promoted as essentially a theme park through a process of partial Disneyization. The second objective is to examine how the ‘theme park’ is perceived by its visitors, more precisely how they see it after their visit and what first-time visitors expect from it beforehand. The first enquiry, performed through the analysis of TripAdvisor reviews, indicates that ex-post, the visitors typically describe having experienced a visit to a theme park. The second enquiry, performed by interviewing first-time visitors about to access the site, suggests that while many first-time visitors expect to visit a theme park as well, others, mainly Western tourists, are expecting a more cultural experience. The findings of the two inquiries are compared to each other and to the image of the site promoted by the local tourism authorities. The subdued political message of the Big Buddha and the degree to which it is discerned by visitors are also discussed.     

Fox Palaces: the playful occupation of a Johannesburg city park

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the playful occupation of an inner-city park in Johannesburg, South Africa, by the Hummingbird Play Association. Playful occupation emerged as a strategy to create and demand spaces for children’s play, demonstrating through practice the possibilities for public play provision. Children’s play is read as a form of folklore, through which children’s and adult’s spatial experiences and imaginings of the city can be viewed. It considers how opportunities for play facilitated with Playwork Principles in mind can co-create safe spaces for children which could act as tools for social transformation and justice in the urban public realm.     

Simulacra and simulation: double simulation at a North Song Dynasty theme park

ABSTRACT

This paper examines an unusual type of ‘cultural theme park’, one that is not based on simulating existing cultural diversity or historical places, but based in some senses on a ‘double simulation’. The theme park is based on an historical painting assumed to represent the North Song Dynasty period in Kaifeng, China; however, it is a representation that historians argue may never have existed. Utilising on-site interviews and participant observation, this paper traces the connections between the classic painting (清明上河图) and the actual historical landscape of Bianjing (the first simulation), and in so doing, unravels the links between the painting and the theme park (the second simulation) and the simulacra that are envisioned to form within the spaces of the theme park as a result of the interplay of simulations during theme park visits. The simulations and intended simulacra are ‘consumed’ to various degrees, suggesting that the representations of Kaifeng's historical past and culture have been impactful and (in)authenticity has not been an issue. Moreover, the theme park has served to entertain and, in some cases, inspire through playful appropriations of Kaifeng's past and culture. The resultant simulacra and its double simulations (in simulating both the real Bianjing and the neo-real landscape painting) contrast and simultaneously connect with rampant replications of the Occident in contemporary Chinese residential landscapes, townships and themed spaces.     

Doing is Learning: Analysis of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Adapt TEK/IK Methodology to Norwegian Sámi Circumstances

Abstract

This article describes a case where an attempt was made to introduce TEK/IK into a conflict between Sámi reindeer owners and environmental institutions. The conflict was brought on by the establishment of a national park in Southern Sámi areas in Norway. At first, the Sámi were in favour of the park, but later on their attitudes changed as the content of planned national park developed. The reindeer owners discovered that the size of the park would be reduced, leaving out what they thought were significant areas in need of protection. They saw the encouragement of increased tourism activities as a threat to reindeer herding and felt alienated by the number of representatives they received in the park management structures. On the basis of these observations reindeer owners protested, but were ignored. As researchers well-established in the Southern Sámi area, we were brought into conversations regarding the park as the local reindeer owners searched for ways of bringing new arguments into the process. At this point we thought TEK/IK represented an opportunity to add weight to Sámi perspectives. As the title of this article indicates, as push came to shove we did not succeed in making room for local participation in our TEK/IK project, despite these existing on-going relations. The article attempts to understand what happened. Our analysis is based upon a perception of TEK/IK as not one, but at least two co-constituted knowledge practices. The premise is that research failures are as important to publish as successes. Our joint ethnographic experience has methodological implications for future TEK/IK research.     

Medieval land remediation of a quarry site at Wallingford,Oxfordshire, revealed by microfossil analysis

Abstract

Backfill material from a 12th- to13th-century quarry, north of Wallingford, south Oxfordshire, comprises sandy loam overlain by Cretaceous (early Cenomanian; Mantelliceras mantelli Macrofaunal Biozone) Glauconitic Marl Member, of the West Melbury Marly Chalk Formation as identified by its abundant, biostratigraphically useful, foraminifera and ostracods. A local outcrop source of the Glauconitic Marl Member, less than 1 km north of the quarry pit, is the likely provenance of this material, and a contemporaneous road, which was discovered adjacent to the medieval quarry by magnetometer surveys and archaeological excavation, would have aided its transportation, into the town via the North Gate. We hypothesise that the use of a calcareous marl to overlay sandy loam deposits probably encouraged land restoration when the quarried area was returned to pastoral agriculture.     

Measuring park visitation vulnerability to climate extremes in U.S. Rockies National Parks tourism

ABSTRACT

Changes in temperature and precipitation can affect tourist experiences. This study examines how summer park visitation has changed in response to temperature and precipitation extremes. The study goals were two-fold. The first is to introduce a framework and the second is to test it in a pilot region with four mountainous National Parks. The framework is designed to compare the vulnerability of seasonal park visitation to shifts in a combined indicator of temperature and precipitation. It uniquely considers needed measurements, and the data required to conduct an analysis. The second goal is to test it in four destinations in the U.S. Northern Rockies, including Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Rocky Mountain National Parks. The preliminary test reveals outlier cases of visitation under wet and dry extremes. The analysis connects time series climate and visitation data for the peak summer season from 1991–2012. Outlier analysis illustrates more change in extremely dry conditions, with four out of the six dry-year outliers resulting in a visitation decline. Whether this decline in park tourism is attributable to climate features, economic factors, or conscious management decisions, these drops have significant economic impacts: estimates of changes in visitor spending during dry years are between roughly 9 and 90 million USD. These differences may be connected to the popular activities in each park, and the extent they are dependent on weather conditions. This framework can be used to test the relationship between climate and tourism visitation in other regions, in various seasons and time frames. The work may inform the tourist sector in adjusting and planning for a range of conditions. We discuss opportunities and conclude with additional needs for understanding the mechanisms behind risk in mountain park tourism under climate extremes.     

Chinook Salmon,Late Holocene Climate Change,and the Occupational History of Kettle Falls,a Columbia River Fishing Station

ABSTRACT

Kettle Falls, located 1125?km from the mouth of the Columbia River in present-day Washington State (USA), was the second-most important salmon fishing and trading locus on that river in the early historic era. We encapsulate the late Holocene history of the fishery by deriving a summed probability distribution function (SPDF) from 50 radiocarbon ages from 13 archaeological sites within 2?km of the falls. When compared to an SPDF from 307 sites from elsewhere on the Columbia Plateau, and a null model, the Kettle Falls SPDF exhibits two phases of elevated activity at 1700–1300?cal BP and 800–500?cal BP, and an intervening lull. These phases are not related to the excavation history or differential exposure of sites to taphonomic processes, but they are concordant with episodes of glacial advance in the local mountains, which reflect hemispheric-scale changes in climate. Modern returns of summer-run Chinook salmon to the Columbia River are inversely correlated with sea-surface temperature regimes in the northeast Pacific Ocean, and we propose that the occupational history of the Kettle Falls fishery echoes long-term variations in the returns of salmon to the upper Columbia River linked to climate change.     

Geophysical and Aerial Prospecting Techniques at Valley Forge National Historical Park,Pennsylvania

Abstract

A survey of Valley Forge National Historical Park was carried out by MASCA in 1978 for the National Park Service utilizing, among other techniques, aerial photography, the cesium magnetometer, and ground penetrating radar. The aim of the project was to locate evidence of the encampment of 1777–78 using for the most part non-destructive methods. Hut sites and offal pits dating from the Revolutionary War period were identified and a comprehensive survey of previous archaeological work at Valley Forge was carried out. A major problem in interpreting the data from the various techniques employed was the amount of modern disturbance at the park, mostly dating from the three Boy Scout Jamborees held there in 1950, 1957, and 1964. Despite these problems valuable information about the Revolutionary War remains was recovered, and a comprehensive plan for future research was formulated.     

The Prehistoric Settlement Pattern of Nevis,West Indies

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an intensive settlement survey of Nevis, a volcanic island of 132 sq km in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. Twenty-one sites were discovered from three major periods—the aceramic in the last millennium B.C., the Saladoid in the first 600 years A.C., and the Ostionoid period dating from 600 A.C. until European contact. The implications of the distribution of settlements and their artifact assemblages for the prehistory of the Leeward Islands are discussed.     

Preservation of Earthen Sites in Remote Areas: the Buddhist Monastery of Ajina Tepa,Tajikistan

Abstract

The Buddhist monastery of Ajina Tepa is one of the most significant in Central Asia as it was fully excavated using up-to-date archaeological methods and was extensively documented. The site is a sophisticated blend of earthen architectural forms, sculptural detail and wall painting decoration, all of which are unique in the area. The site is located in south Tajikistan along the Vahsh valley, about 13 km east from the modern city of Kurgan Tybe.

The aim of the paper is to give an overview of the UNESCO/Japan Trust Fund project 'Preservation of the Buddhist Monastery of Ajina Tepa, Tajikistan (Heritage of the Ancient Silk Roads)'. The paper describes the historical background, the main conservation threats, the analytical work in the selection of repair material, the preparatory work before conservation, the documentation activities, and the conservation work carried out at the site.     

‘Cuteifying’ spaces and staging marine animals for Chinese middle-class consumption

ABSTRACT

In this paper, Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in Zhuhai is considered an aestheticised space for the growing Chinese middle class. Located within the booming and fast-urbanising Pearl River Delta, the theme park is a sizeable project consisting of rides, marine mammal enclosures and a well-equipped state-of-the-art circus. Utilising ethnography, including visitor interviews, and discourse analysis of websites, mobile apps and promotional materials, the theme park is found to deploy animal motifs in three key ways: as spectacular backdrops for amusement rides, as objects of biodiversity-based edutainment and as highly personified agents in visitor relations. Building on existing literature on decontextualised animal display – where emphasis on the provision of a natural habitat is replaced by simulated and actual proximity of animals to the visitors – I argue that the ‘out-of-situ’, cuteified and hyperreal stagings of Chimelong's animals have been shaped by two further China-specific processes. The first is the engagement with the theme park space as a sanitised and safe environment for a then one-child policy inspired child-centred visitation. The second refers to the retail-oriented consumerist experiences demonstrated by the new Chinese middle class. Both processes have brought about an aestheticising endeavour in line with the idealisation of other (Chinese) middle-class spaces, and have positioned Chinese theme parks as key nodes in our understanding of leisure and tourism spaces and of middle-class landscapes in contemporary China. Such an examination is made at a juncture where and when abuse of marine mammals is allegedly on the rise, and sheds light on the social processes shaping the popularity of such experiences in contemporary China.     

Book reviews

Abstract

This paper explores not just a framework for the protection of cultural heritage relating to a certain place, but also its use as a tool for the enhancement and survival of an identity, based on tradition, common history, and respect for the surrounding environment and identities. The aim is to secure the communities' identities within a common economic framework based on the sustainable development of tourism.

After considering the social complexity of interpreting Spanish twentieth-century history (especially the Civil War and dictatorship), the paper considers the management and interpretation of a Civil War complex at Villargord o del Cabriel, in the Valencia region, which includes the concerns and desires for both resource conservation and economic development. It is proposed that this can be achieved by short-term strategies for community involvement, combined with long-term concerns for conservation of the architecture and the environment, educational and interpretive strategies for the park and surrounding landscape, monitoring, and review, and sustainable tourism in the area.     

Archaeological Excavations of the Medieval Royal Kincardine Landscape,Aberdeenshire, Scotland

KINCARDINE PARK is among the earliest and largest medieval parks in Scotland. It was royally owned and is believed to have served as a hunting park throughout the 13th and 14th centuries. Nearby are the ruins of Kincardine Castle, considered to be associated with the park, and one of the first Scottish stone-built castles. This paper presents the results of excavations conducted in the park landscape, and at the stone-built Scottish castle. New insights are provided on how medieval Scottish parks were constructed and used, and the cultural significance of these monuments is explored.     

Pre-Columbian Ring Ditches along the Yacuma and Rapulo Rivers,Beni, Bolivia: A Preliminary Review

Abstract

Pre-Columbian farmers built a variety of earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos, part of the Bolivian Amazon. Raised fields, canals, causeways, and mounds of various types in this region date to ca. 800 B.C.–A.D. 1600. In central Mojos, archaeological work was carried out along the Yacuma, a large west-bank tributary of the Mamoré River. Four ring ditches and two areas of associated raised agricultural fields were mapped. The Global Positioning System was used to document earthworks under the forest canopy which were analyzed within a Geographic Information System. Ceramic evidence is also included. The ring ditches in this study expand the known range of such earthworks in Mojos by 200 km. This revised distribution of ring ditches changes interpretations of the long-term history of Arawak speakers in Mojos and throughout Amazonia. While earthworks in Mojos clearly represent systems of intensive agriculture, they cannot be associated only with Arawak speakers or with Arawak languages.     

Survey,Settlement, and Population History at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun,Belize

Abstract

Survey and excavations of mounds on the outskirts of the site of Pacbitun in western Belize provide insights into the ancient Maya settlement pattern at this medium-sized regional center. This research employed two methods: analysis of structural remains from four separate 1000 m transect surveys,and a subsequent complete (100%) survey of intervening and adjacent quadrant areas. The overlap of quadrant zones with portions of the transect units permits an examination of the accuracy of transect surveys. Excavation of a 22% sample of all identified mounds provides chronological and functional information. An estimate of 200 persons for the resident elite population of the Epicenter of Pacbit un is offered. Initial settlement occurred in the Epicenter of the site during the Middle Preclassic period (900–300 B.C.), with a population rise through time until the final phase of the Late Classic period (A.D. 700–900), when density reached 550 persons (periphery Zone) to 950 persons (Core Zone) per sq km. The impact on settlement size and distribution of topography, soils,water resources,and intensive agriculture (hillside terracing) is assessed and found to be significant. At the time of florescence,the population of the 9 sq km site is estimated to have been about 5000–6000 persons. This population estimate is compared with several coeval lowland Maya centers,and found to be reasonable for a medium-sized, Late Classic Maya center.