Subject–object perceptions of heritage: a framework for the study of contrasting railway heritage regeneration strategies

A railway or any other form of heritage site may be perceived as a subject or an object-orientated experience. While the former invites an emotional reaction based on personal association, the later suggests a detached response grounded in a transfer of knowledge. This paper considers the role of heritage legislation in shaping such perceptions. Using archival research and site observations, the paper specifically examines the impact of different State-based heritage legislation on the adoption of contrasting redevelopment and site management strategies at two historic railway workshop complexes in Australia. The two sites are the Eveleigh Railway Workshops in New South Wales where an object-centred approach was adopted, and the Ipswich Workshops in Queensland where a subject-centred approach was employed. Although both sites are comparable in terms of their history, scale and cultural significance, the alternative approaches to redevelopment and management have resulted in different perceptual experiences for visitors. The paper reveals the subliminal impact of heritage legislation and suggests the need to consciously manage perceptual experiences, firstly, as a strategic objective in any redevelopment process and, secondly, as a means to integrating meaningful site-specific interpretation into the longer term management of cultural significance.     

Cultural landscape protection in Australia: The Wingecarribee Shire study

Abstract

The concept of cultural landscapes as remarkable windows onto the past, and rich historical documents that can be read has gained increasingly wide acceptance in Australia over the past few years. Allied to this, and informing it. is the way in which landscape as a cultural construct plays a major role in attachment to place and sense of Australianness. The understanding of cultural landscapes as a setting where human history is on display is a community movement as well as a professional one. This paper reviews one particular study which focused on heritage evaluation of an historic rural landscape and moves for its protection.     

Wild and domesticated forms of rice (Oryza sp.) in early agriculture at Qingpu, lower Yangtze, China: evidence from phytoliths

Rice cultivation in parts of the Yangtze valley, eastern China, is thought to date to at least the early Holocene. Using phytolith analysis, sediments from an exposed profile at Qingpu in the lower Yangtze were examined in detail in order to contribute to the growing body of information relating to the history of rice agriculture in the Yangtze delta area. The presence of phytoliths from domesticated rice, Oryza sativa, indicates that rice agriculture was well developed at Qingpu by ca. 2350 BP and may have increased in intensity from ca. 2100 BP. Rice cultivation at Qingpu was comparatively late in relation to other areas in the Yangtze valley, possibly due to the seasonal intrusion of saline waters, while the cultivation of wild rice remained a prominent feature of food production in the area to at least as late as ca. 1800 BP. Results presented here support the existence of a period of overlap, during which both wild and domesticated forms of rice were cultivated, rather than a linear transition from wild to domesticated rice cultivation and the possible influence of environmental factors over farming in an area subjected to frequent flooding.