Ways of Belonging: Reconciliation and Adelaide's Public Space Indigenous Cultural Markers

As an arguably ‘post colonial’ society, Australia is evolving its particular identity and sense of self, but reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples remains a significant political and cultural issue. Social inclusion or marginalisation is reflected in the construct of the civic landscape and this paper traces and contextualises public space Indigenous representation or ‘cultural markers’, since the 1960s in Adelaide, South Australia, the Kaurna people's land. This paper identifies social phases and time periods in the evolution of the ways in which Indigenous people and their culture have been included in the city's public space. Inclusion of Indigenous peoples in civic landscapes contributes not only to their spiritual and cultural renewal and contemporary identity, but also to the whole community's sense of self and to the process of reconciliation. This has the potential to provide a gateway to a different way of understanding place which includes an Indigenous perspective and could, symbolically, contribute to the decolonisation of Indigenous people. An inter‐related issue for the colonising culture is reconciliation with the Indigenous nature of the land, in the sense of an intimate sense of belonging and connectedness of spirit through an understanding of Indigenous cultural landscapes, an issue which this paper explores. The paper also sets out suggestions for the facilitation of further Indigenous inclusion and of re‐imagining ways of representation.     

Inscribed landscapes in the Black Desert: Petroglyphs and kites at Wisad Pools,Jordan

Petroglyphs are well known in the Negev, eastern and southern Jordan, and the Arabian Peninsula. Intensive documentation of hundreds of petroglyphs at the site of Wisad Pools in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan records animals, humans, hunting traps and geometric designs, connecting people and places to the larger landscape. These were recorded at the landscape scale with drones and photogrammetry, and the local scale through the construction of a database combined with GPS recording and terrestrial photogrammetry. Petroglyphs of animals and hunting traps are significant because the site is located within a landscape that includes enormous and enigmatic hunting traps (desert kites). Mapping these depictions highlights typological distribution, association of types, and relation to landscape features as well as the topography of the basalt boulders on which they were pecked. The depictions of animals and hunting traps provide clues about the use of desert kites, the social role of hunting, communal gatherings, and feasting in the region.     

Extraordinary Creatures: The Role of Birds in Early Iron Age Slovenia

ABSTRACT

Depictions of birds are overrepresented in the Dolenjska Hallstatt culture, and appear on over a quarter of artefacts depicting animals. A wide variety of artefacts with birds have been found primarily in graves, and crosscut gender, status, and age. However, poor preservation of zooarchaeological remains has made reconstructions of lived human-bird interactions difficult. This study uses ecological and ethological data, combined with local imagery, to provide insight into prehistoric human-bird interfaces in this area, and the cultural conceptions surrounding these interactions. Birds would have been a constant presence in the lives of Dolenjska Hallstatt people; however, human relationships with them were based more on observation than direct interaction. Birds were ubiquitous in imagery, and it is proposed that this stemmed from Dolenjska Hallstatt conceptions of birds as important observers of human actions, ritual mediators, and possibly guides or guardians. Their differences from humans and other animals distinguished them – they were set apart, and depictions highlighted non-normative behaviours. Birds in the Dolenjska Hallstatt worldview were more than animals, ascribed extraordinary capabilities that made them ritually potent and richly symbolic creatures.     

Architecture is not everything: a multi-faceted conceptual framework for evaluating heritage protection policies and disputes

ABSTRACT

This paper is grounded in a rancorous debate in built-heritage studies concerning heritage policies and the disputes associated with them. Despite the seeming dominance of architectural considerations in decision-making about heritage protection, factual evidence from previous studies shows that not one, but five factors are involved, in differing doses, in the decisions made by planning bodies: architecture and design, city-planning, social considerations, economics, and property-related considerations. This paper categorizes each of these elements and frames them in a new conceptual framework. . The framework analyses the five factors from the perspectives of two prisms: support or opposition to heritage protection policies. Through a prominent case-example of Tel Aviv’s conservation plan, we then demonstrate that the new conceptual framework can be utilized to better understand the multifaceted debates – overt or covert – surrounding heritage protection. The case study and the conceptual framework suggest that although urban form and design issues are quite dominant, other non-physical considerations shape the dynamics of conflicts, practices, and policies surrounding heritage protection.     

Seismic Vulnerability of Historical Masonry Aggregate Buildings in Oriental Sicily

ABSTRACT

The seismic vulnerability assessment of historical UnReinforced Masonry (URM) buildings is a very complex task since it is strongly related to a great variety both of geometrical layouts and of masonry mechanical characteristics. In this article, some results of a Catania University research project, denomined “FIR 2014”, focused on the seismic vulnerability estimation of historical buildings, built in Catania after the 1963 earthquake, are presented. First, a detailed typological analysis of the considered urban fabric, characterized by typical residential masonry buildings, has been performed. Such analysis allowed recognizing an elementary structural modulus, which has been studied according to different geometrical layouts representative of isolated or aggregate buildings. The results of nonlinear static analyses, performed by applying an innovative macro-element approach, allowed for the assessment the seismic vulnerability of typical URM buildings coherently to the Italian seismic code. The adopted macro-element strategy for the seismic assessment of aggregate masonry buildings, although related to a specific historical center, may be applied to similar urban fabrics and can also be used for the calibration and validation of fast seismic assessment strategies, particularly useful for the evaluation of the seismic risk at urban scale.     

Spinoza on art and the cultivation of a disposition toward joyful living

ABSTRACT

This paper forms part of a larger project which seeks to derive a theory of art from a close reading of Spinoza's work. It focuses on the importance of the aligned terms of ingenium and dispositio, which are both used to discuss the central importance of “dispostion” to our capacity to live well. While it is not possible to avoid affects, it is possible to order them in such a way that their negative impacts are lessened and their positive impacts are enhanced. We begin by underlining the importance of disposition to opening the way to understanding. We connect this to Spinoza's acknowledgement of the importance of art in helping to provide a plan for living. We turn to readings of ingenium in the work of Moreau and Balibar to further explore how the concept of disposition helps us to recognise the capacities of works of art to affect their audiences.     

Matilda,Leonor and Joanna: the Plantagenet sisters and the display of dynastic connections through material culture

The material culture related to Duchess Matilda of Saxony, Queen Leonor of Castile and Countess Joanna of Toulouse (and former Queen of Sicily) offers a rich resource that allows us to understand how, when and why they connected themselves to their father, Henry II of England. The objects studied in this article prompt significant questions regarding the relation between material culture and royal women, which allow us to explore the formative phases in women’s lives as well as their roles in the promotion and construction of a dynastic consciousness. Even though the sisters probably acted separately, they did so with a shared awareness of their positions as royal daughters and the need to communicate this collectively. By centring on the three sisters’ objects, this article proposes that the study of material culture is crucial for a better understanding of the co-operation between siblings and can contribute to a more nuanced interpretation of power.     

Nature and source of the gandhara sculptural schist

No definite source localities have been identified for the stones used by the Gandharan sculptors, but it is considered that the predominant rock was an alumina-rich chloritoid-paragonite-muscovite-quartz schist, probably from Swat. A chemical analysis of this rock is presented.     

At the limits of critical geography: Creative interventions into the exclusionary spaces of U.S. geography

Abstract

In recent years, geographers have increasingly called for and enacted more sustained engagements between geography and the arts. This creative (re)turn represents both a renewed interest in recovering interdisciplinary practices within the history of the discipline and a desire to create space for new methods and creative approaches. This article develops in response to two areas requiring further critical engagement and development within the creative (re)turn: questions about the place of identity in creative geographies and the potential for creative geographies to perform critical interventions into disciplinary spaces and identities. I explore and develop these areas of concern alongside a discussion of a critical-creative geographies exhibit, The Critical Futures Visual Archive. Through a presentation of select works in this collection and a candid discussion of the institutional obstacles encountered in curating it, I elaborate upon the challenges and critical potentials of integrating creative practices into geography as a form of feminist praxis.