A Ticking Clock? Preservation and Management of Greenland’s Archaeological Heritage in the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACT

Evaluating the rate of deterioration at archaeological sites in the Arctic presents several challenges. In West Greenland, for example, increasing soil temperatures, perennial thaws, coastal erosion, storm surges, changing microbial communities, and pioneer plant species are observed as increasingly detrimental to the survival of organic archaeological deposits found scattered along the country’s littoral zones and extensive inner fjord systems. This article discusses recent efforts by the REMAINS of Greenland project for developing a standardised protocol that defines the archaeological state of preservation, the preservation conditions, and asset value of organic deposits. Special emphasis is given to the degradation of materials such as bone and wood that are historically observed to be well-preserved in Greenland but now currently at risk. The protocol provides a baseline for monitoring future changes and will assist archaeologists in Greenland with a procedure for documenting and predicting areas of increasing vulnerability due to a warming climate.     

What is in a name? How caste names affect the production of situated knowledge

Patel, Desai, Kothari … to those literate in the workings of caste these names describe a network and its power in relation to other networks, they infer the rules of engagement within and between network members, and they ascribe a geographical terrain to home. In research, rules of behaviour and assumptions of place that are coded into names can affect access to respondents, their disclosure of data and subsequent claims to validity. This article explores the coded expectations of knowledge embedded in a name as seen by someone (me) fairly illiterate in the workings of caste by utilising the principle of Bourdieu’s doxa – a ‘pre-reflexive intuitive knowledge’ – to untangle and explore the effect of names on the production of partial and situated knowledge. Drawing on fieldwork in Gujarat, India, I analyse reflexive accounts through the lenses of feminist geographers and critical race scholars to illustrate the effects of being unknowingly and unwillingly placed into a social hierarchy of power in the field, introduce the idea of ‘us-ing’ (an opposite of othering) to describe researcher-respondent relations, and explore how readers might interpret the presence or absence of data and claims to validity. These accounts make visible the effects of positionality on knowledge production in ways that speak to feminist-postcolonial research, and specifically to feminist researchers of colour conducting research away from ‘home’.     

What is Geography? Perceptions of first year undergraduates in South Africa

Disciplines such as Geography are well placed to respond to the changing needs of society and the effective application of geographical knowledge to real-world problems. This project surveyed first year Geography undergraduates’ understanding of “What is Geography?”, both before and after an exercise in which geographic topics were identified within recent newspapers. The survey instrument employed was an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire, and was undertaken with first-year undergraduate Geography students at a university in South Africa. Results show that the exercise enabled students (n = 158) to more readily see the application of geographical knowledge to both environmental and social problems that they identified in the newspaper stories. Students also identified that studying Geography may be able to help them increase their skills, employment prospects and earning potential. These findings can help locate the disciplinary concerns and applicability of Geography in post-apartheid South Africa within the wider context of the twenty-first Century world.     

‘Where we need to go’: comments on ‘decennial reflections on A Geography of Heritage’

This article is a comment on: Tubridge et al., 2012. Decennial reflections on a ‘geography of heritage’ (2000). International Journal of Heritage Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2012.695038     

What’s in a Name? Beyond The Mary Watson Stories to a Historical Archaeology of Lizard Island

Preliminary historical archaeological research on Lizard Island in far north Queensland is enabling the Queensland Government to develop more effective management strategies for on-site interpretation of the historical precinct of Watsons Bay. Although popularly associated with the north Queensland colonial heroine Mary Watson, the Bay can now be understood as a large multilayered cultural landscape with meaning to a wide variety of groups. The common aspects of the three known beche-de-mer operations that occupied the Bay between 1860 and 1881 and the nature of the emerging archaeological record afford many opportunities for scaled archaeological research. It further highlights aspects of historical archaeological theory and the relationship between the discipline and the historical record.     

A Blessing in Disguise: Nanxun and China’s Small Town Heritage

This article analyzes Nanxun, a lower Yangzi delta town known for its silk products, as a case study of China’s development and underdevelopment. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a booming silk trade linked Nanxun to the global market and made it an extraordinarily wealthy town, yet little was achieved in terms of urban development. Scholars have attributed the underdevelopment of Nanxun to economic factors, and perceived it as entirely undesirable. This article argues that a largely overlooked cause of Nanxun’s underdevelopment was the conformist culture of Nanxun’s ruling elite. The merchants who created the wealth of the town by their very natures preferred to create a safe and secluded zone in which the familiarity of their living environment could be preserved and the comfort of a traditional lifestyle assured. The underdevelopment of Nanxun turned out, however, not to be completely negative. The town did not sustain its status as a trading center, nor develop into a major city, but its arrested development preserved much of its original layout and, moreover, its culture. From a cultural and environmental point of view, Nanxun’s underdevelopment may have proved to be more valuable than if the town had become an indistinguishable industrial site.     

Why Women of Colour in Geography?

The dismally low number of women of colour in the discipline of geography in dominantly English-speaking countries can be explained by a number of systemic features of the discipline. Evidence suggests that a culture of whiteness in academic hiring has overtaken more overt forms of racial and sexist discrimination to limit the number of women of colour hired. More fundamentally, a lack of mentoring discourages women of colour from entering the discipline from undergraduate studies onward. We now face the ironic situation that as more and more studies of racism and other forms of discrimination appear in the geographical literature, the number of women of colour doing those studies remains static.

¿Por qué mujeres de color en geografía?

Las cifras deplorablemente bajas de mujeres de color en la disciplina de geografía anglo-americana pueden ser explicado por varios característicos sistemático de la disciplina. La evidencia sugiere que una cultura de blancura en la contratación académica ha alcanzado formas más explícito de discriminación racial y sexual que limita el número de mujeres en la disciplina. Más fundamental, la falta de dar consejo disuade mujeres de color de abrazar la disciplina desde los estudios universitario no graduado hacia adelante. Nos enfrentamos con la situación irónica que mientras se publican más y más estudios de racismo y otras formas de discriminación en las revistas geográficas, el número de mujeres de color que produce estos estudios queda estático.     

Conserving Hong Kong’s Heritage: The Case of Queen’s Pier

The case of Queen’s Pier in Hong Kong provides the context for a discussion of conceptions of heritage, the purposes it serves and the dilemmas surrounding conservation in modern Asian societies committed to economic growth. Efforts to save the historic pier from destruction are recounted and the perspectives of those with an interest are examined. Built heritage is shown to have socio‐cultural, political and economic functions and its contribution to defining identity is especially important in times of change and uncertainty. Circumstances in Hong Kong reflect its unique history and current status, but the issues emerging from the analysis have a wider relevance. The fundamental tension between development and conservation is highlighted, together with the challenges of reconciling these two forces in a satisfactory manner.     

Geography: a different sort of discipline?

Debate continues about the inter-relationships between human and physical geography and their different research and publication practices. Relatively little data about these are available, however. Using an analysis of all publications submitted by UK geographers to the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, this paper identifies a substantial difference between human and physical geographers in their publication strategies. Most physical geographers place their research papers in specialized inter-disciplinary journals and make relatively little use of geography outlets: most human geographers, on the other hand, publish in geography journals. Comparisons with other disciplines – in the earth and environmental and social sciences respectively – also identify differences between geographers and their peers. The overall conclusion is that, with regard to research and publication at least, UK geography cannot be presented as a single academic community with strong internal ties, but rather as a conglomerate of separate communities writing for different audiences.     

The Hadrian’s Wall Major Study: a test for participatory planning in the management of a World Heritage Site

Abstract

Values-based systems of heritage management have developed hand-in-hand with the role of the stakeholder in successful management. It has become increasingly apparent that, just as in concurrent movements in Western governments to invigorate democratic society, success lies not just in consultation, but also in participation. The next stage, of participatory planning, has moved heritage management theory finally from government to governance. But does the ideal work? Vulnerabilities appeared in an established system of site management through participatory planning on Hadrian’s Wall, England, when it came under pressure from the attentions of two regional development agencies keen to find ways to make the Wall contribute better to the local economy. The economic, historical and institutional background to the resulting Major Study is examined, and the events of the consultation, publication and implementation of the report are followed and analysed, in order to draw out some broader lessons for the challenging task of managing such large and complex sites.     

Rome’s Uncomfortable Heritage: Dealing with History in the Aftermath of WWII

Rome is a city famed for its outstanding cultural heritage stretching back two and a half thousand years. However, the events of the Second World War raise particular problems in dealing with this patrimony. This article examines the issues raises by the monuments built during the Fascist period and the Roman remains excavated by the Fascists. It also examines how commemoration throughout the city since 1945 reflects the changing attitudes to the war. The article argues that Rome has not yet come to terms with its Fascist past and that this constitutes a barrier to a sustainable heritage plan.     

A Stake in Place? The Geography of Employee Ownership and its Implications for a Stakeholding Society

In recent years employee ownership has become a means by which some workers facing privatization, closure or takeover have attempted to defend their jobs and communities. Proponents of a 'stakeholding' society have advocated the widening of share ownership as a means of democratizing the economy, building partnerships and achieving consensus at work. But is employee ownership able to sustain local investment and industrial partnership? Through a detailed case study of a management and employee buyout in the railway industry, I suggest that the ability of employee ownership to fix investment in place may be enhanced by relations of 'stakeholding', increasing employee commitment to the firm and its future. In the case studied here, however, lack of employee power and finance effectively excluded most workers from the processes and philosophy of the buyout. The new ownership structure did little to reshape local relations between workers and those in control. While ownership cannot eradicate economic threats to community, it might, if used as a mechanism to promote new styles of management and employee commitment, foster long-term success. It is argued that government and trade unions can do more to promote wider employee ownership and participation at work in the future.     

The artist’s resale right revisited: a new perspective

This paper revisits the debate concerning the legal provisions of the artist’s resale right with the aim of providing some new perspectives. Using recently released empirical studies, the paper argues that while resale right payments may be concentrated on established artists in value terms, small amounts will be paid to a large number of relatively unknown artists, particularly in the European market where lower value transactions are large in number. By drawing on the non‐economic literature on pricing art in the primary art market, the paper suggests the rationales of the resale right, often seen as invalid in the past, may actually be valid. Art dealers will be faced with complex economic impacts as the resale right is legislated.     

Subsistence Digging in Iran’s Archeology and the Cultural Heritage

Subsistence digging is an action taken by people living a region to find antiquities in order to sell them and use resulting proceeds as a means of living. Subsistence digging is the main source of recent excavated cultural materials supplied to the market. The term is tied to the economy and plays an important socioeconomic role in many countries particularly in developing countries throughout the world by solving the starvation problem. Despite of the frequency of digging activities, they have not been investigated and even are not known in Iran so far. To find out the possible reasons behind digging activities and the neglect of the relevant authorities and agencies, this study explores subsistence digging and distinguishes it from looting, a term that is frequently referred to as the looting of cultural heritage in Iran.     

The plebe in the Florentine Histories: Machiavelli’s notion of humours revisited

According to recent scholarship, the Florentine Histories expresses Machiavelli’s growing scepticism toward the popolo. This more elitist ‘late Machiavelli’, however, is an illusion. I show that the illusion arose from (1) the scholarly oversight of Machiavelli’s criticism of the popolo in his early work, Discourses, and (2) the failure to notice his new terminological distinction between the popolo and the plebe in the Florentine Histories. Machiavelli never was a whole-hearted defender of the popolo in the first place, for his consistent commitment was to preserve the balance between the popolo and the grandi. Nor was he unusually critical of the popolo in his later work, Florentine Histories: he directs his harshest criticism to the lower-class plebe and not to the middle-class popolo.