Kakadu National Park World Heritage Site: Deconstructing the Debate, 1997–2003

The case of Kakadu National Park has had an unusually large amount of time and expense devoted to it in meetings of the World Heritage Bureau and the World Heritage Committee since 1997. Major controversy arose following the announcement that a new uranium mine would be developed at Jabiluka, located in an enclave surrounded by the World Heritage property, but not legally part of it. The explosive juxtaposition of issues concerning the trio of conservation of heritage values, uranium mining, and Aboriginal land rights inevitably led to strong reactions against the Federal Government's decision to allow mining, not least on the part of Australian and international non‐government organisations. It was felt that the mining development would jeopardise the integrity of the key values for which Kakadu had been inscribed on the World Heritage List. This paper attempts to unravel some of the strands of the ensuing debate — to at least begin to deconstruct the debate — that saw Kakadu almost placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. This is an important task to attempt because there were many undercurrents to the publicly reported debate, and a large degree of ‘reading between the lines’ is needed to interpret official records of meetings adequately. The paper also attempts to throw some light on the forceful opposition to such a move on the part of the Australian Government, based in large part on its underlying developmentalist philosophy, and at a time when it was giving less than wholehearted support to many international agreements to which Australia is a signatory. Finally, it is hoped that an insight into the workings of the World Heritage Convention and its supporting bodies will be gained.     

Building blocks of polycentric governance

Success or failure of a polycentric system is a function of complex political and social processes, such as coordination between actors and venues to solve specialized policy problems. Yet there is currently no accepted method for isolating distinct processes of coordination, nor to understand how their variance affects polycentric governance performance. We develop and test a building-blocks approach that uses different patterns or “motifs” for measuring and comparing coordination longitudinally on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Our approach confirms that polycentric governance comprises an evolving substrate of interdependent venues and actors over time. However, while issue specialization and actor participation can be improved through the mobilization of venues, such a strategy can also fragment overall polycentric capacity to resolve conflict and adapt to new problems. A building-blocks approach advances understanding and practice of polycentric governance by enabling sharper diagnosis of internal dynamics in complex environmental governance systems.     

From Moments to Histories: A Social Archaeology of the Mesolithic?

This contribution will provide a critical overview of the other papers within this special issue of Journal of World Prehistory (Elliott and Little 2018), identifying key aspects of the discussion and assessing potentials and problems in the development of Mesolithic archaeology in Britain and Ireland as a whole since 2006 (Conneller and Warren in Mesolithic Britain and Ireland: New approaches, Stroud, Tempus, 2006a). Reflections will include how the contribution of very high-resolution analyses to Mesolithic archaeology has changed since 2006 and the scale of our interpretations. The review will also identify areas which appear to be falling from analytical focus, including the role of analogies in Mesolithic archaeology and the nature of power and social relationships in Mesolithic communities.     

A Popular Public Theology

Abstract

The article begins by exploring what is meant by a popular public theology drawing on the work of the missiologist Werner Ustorf. A popular public theology refers to the informal and unofficial theological speech of society, distinct from the more formal theology of the Church and academy. Such popular public theology is found in contemporary culture, albeit often in diffuse and incoherent form. It is then argued that a popular public theology has an inbuilt relevance to the concerns of society, avoids problems associated with public theologians needing to be fluent in more than one academic discourse, and is not in danger of being reliant on the social sciences. Finally, it is suggested that by discussing the implications of cultural theological statements, public theologians are able to contribute critically to social and political debates.     

Three-dimensional visibility analysis of architectural spaces: iconography and visibility of the wall paintings of Xeste 3 (Late Bronze Age Akrotiri)

In recent years various methods of visibility analysis have been applied to investigate human engagement, experience and socialisation within historic and prehistoric ’natural’ and built environments. On many occasions these approaches appear to be either extremely limited or wholly inadequate for the interpretation of complex built structures and building interiors because they do not fully model the three-dimensional geometry of such spaces. This paper briefly reviews computational approaches to visual analysis that have been previously applied in archaeological research, and then goes on to introduce a new analytical technique that uses fully 3D reconstructions of past environments. This method integrates common functionalities of 3D modelling software and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), essentially permitting viewshed analysis to be performed upon objects of any form and shape modelled in 3D. We argue that the proposed methodology can generate new data and encourage fresh lines of enquiry in the study of extant and partially preserved historic and prehistoric built structures in a variety of contexts, ranging from building interiors and townscapes to landscapes. The potential of the method is illustrated by applying the suggested analysis to explore visual perception issues associated with the urban remains of Late Bronze Age Akrotiri (Thera, Greece).     

Discovering the antipodes

Recent work on the past of Australia and New Zealand is surveyed in terms broadly relevant to the many evolving geographies of European settlement overseas since the eighteenth century. Although there was uncertainty about the future of historical geography in the antipodes during the late 1960s, a good deal has been accomplished in the last six years. Recent work has been strongly empirical as historical geographers, and others, have sought to understand the complexity of local development. In this process of discovery, there are immense possibilities for further work. New questions asked of new sources, incisive analyses and thoughtful syntheses will reveal much about the development of society and setting in these outposts of nineteenth-century European expansion.