Laboratory and in situ assays of digital image analysis based protocols for biodeteriorated rock and mural paintings recording

Rock art paintings, and in general mural paintings, are one of the many elements of cultural heritage complex systems. As the different elements of a system have diverse spatial positions, spatial recording allows understanding their interactions. Thus, a useful approach to mural paintings recording is to understand it as a microcartography issue, managing each element of the system as a cartographic coverage.     

On National Heritage,Grand Narratives,and ‘Making History Fun’: Founders’ Hall,Prince Edward Island and the Story of Canada

Cities in developed countries are increasingly challenged by the advent of a global economy that mandates generating creative images of their cities. Meanwhile, it is argued in this study that globalisation, and its Arabic version of Dubaisation, is affecting the sustainability of cities as distinguished destinations because urban representation is influenced not only by ‘standardised global cliché’ but also by ‘standardised local images’ that transforms local cultures into contested heritage as it intensifies an official and civic nexus. The paradox is examined in Jordan, specifically the famously branded ‘city of mosaic’ – Madaba, where the state government is currently competing for attracting international investments and tourism development to achieve neoliberal urban restructuring. Urban heritage representation has been subject to passive dominant official discourse that rests upon orthodox mosaic practices of remote past – a praxis that is not necessarily endorsed by civic Ahl elbalad. The local mosaic heritage has hitherto been transformed into a competing culture that fosters heritage dualities and challenges the internal implications of heritage representation with its elevated feelings of alienation, disempowerment, gentrification and socio-cultural exclusion. A theoretical framework has been suggested for an alternative civic-orientated heritage revival that allows reconciliation between the official/civic nexus yet meanwhile stimulates creative urban images and identities. Other insights are also considered in the study.     

“赛中会”型会议旅游者的综合形象感知及行为意向研究——以2011年深圳FISU学术大会为例

利用大型体育赛事进行旅游目的地形象的建设与营销推广已经成为国际上一个流行的趋势.本文以2011年深圳世界大学生运动会为例,就大会期间举行的FISU学术大会与会者的旅游动机、综合形象感知以及后续旅游意向等之间的关系进行了探索性研究.双变量相关及多元线性回归分析的结果显示：（1）与会者的旅游动机不仅与学术大会本身有显著的关系,同时还会对更大范围内的赛事以及整个目的地认知形象产生更大的影响作用;（2）受大运会作为特定时空范围内的“中心事件”的影响,与会者对赛事的认知形象可以对目的地情感形象以及后续的目的地旅游意向产生作用;同时,会议型旅游者对深圳市作为旅游目的地整体形象的认知也多集中在“节事”这个维度,并进而对目的地情感形象以及旅游行为意向产生显著影响.本文的研究结果对大型体育赛事举办地发展事件旅游有一定的借鉴意义.     

基于旅游者视角的目的地品牌权益测量模型：以皖南国际旅游区为例

本研究基于旅游者的视角构建旅游目的地品牌权益测量模型,并使用来自中国的经验数据对其进行检验和修正。研究发现：旅游目的地品牌权益包括4个维度：品牌知晓、品牌形象、品牌质量、品牌忠诚。其中,品牌知晓是品牌权益的基本来源,对品牌形象和品牌质量有显著直接影响;品牌形象是品牌权益的最重要维度,显著影响品牌质量和品牌忠诚;品牌质量显著影响品牌忠诚;品牌忠诚是品牌权益的核心概念,是品牌建设追求的重要目标。     

Interpreting umeewarra mission

Abstract

Indigenous occupation of Australia for at least the last 60,000 years, was followed by European settlers in 1788. Christian missions and government reserves established at this time, often removed Aboriginal children from their parents, families and land. These children are ‘the Stolen Generation’. One such mission was Umeewarra Mission at Port Augusta in South Australia, which was established by the Brethren church in the 1930s and operated until recently. Some of the former children who were raised at the Mission have established a committee, the Umeewarra Nguraritja (meaning ‘place’ or ‘home'), to oversee the Mission site. The Umeewarra Nguraritja wants to establish an Interpretive Centre to tell the Aboriginal and missionary history of the Mission. It needs to preserve and interpret the mission culture in a way which maintains the integrity of that history and presents the material culture, the oral histories and stories from former children of the mission, sensitively to visitors. This paper reports on the research process being used for strategic planning of site management and interpretation. The paper addresses in particular the need for the researchers to be sympathetic to both indigenous and missionary cultures, playing both supportive and leadership roles in order to give something back to the ‘stolen generation’.     

Hotel design in British Mandate Palestine: Modernism and the Zionist vision

From the early 1920s through the 1930s, an important yet forgotten avant-garde architectural phenomenon developed in the Zionist community of British Mandate Palestine. In cities and resort regions across the country, several dozen modernist hotels were built for a new type of visitor: the Zionist tourist. Often the most architecturally significant structures in their locales and designed by leading local architects educated in some of Europe's most progressive schools, these hotels were conceived along ideological lines and represented a synthesis of social requirements, cutting-edge aesthetics, and utopian national ideals. They responded to a complex mixture of sentiments, including European standards of modern comfort and the longing to remake Palestine, the historical homeland of the Jewish people, for a newly liberated, progressive nation. This article focuses on Jerusalem's most ambitious modernist hotel, the Eden Hotel, to evaluate how the architecture of tourism became a political and aesthetic tool in the promotion of Zionist Palestine.     

Discrimination of Ceramic Types Using Digital Image Processing by Means of Morphological Filters

Digital processing of images can be used to analyse ceramic pastes, contributing in this way to the discrimination of ceramic types. The method involves several stages of analysis: digitization of images of ceramic pastes, pre‐processing of the images, particle segmentation, calculation, quantification and classification of the particle sizes. This procedure uses interactive algorithms of segmentation of images and grain size analysis derived from mathematical morphology theory. To prove the efficiency of the method, we processed digital images of polished thin sections of ceramic samples of Cypriot wares from the Late Bronze Age (1550–1450 bc ) and their Egyptian reproductions. Such groups have been previously analysed by optical microscopy, XRD, XRF, ICP–MS and EPMA. The results of the analysis were able to discriminate between these two different wares.     

Mobile Cartographies and Mobilized Ideologies: The Visual Management of Jerusalem

This article analyses a recent ideological shift in the visual management of Jerusalem. Through two case studies in the real estate and tourism industries we show how mobile technologies are shaping both actual settings in, and visual consumption of, Jerusalem. The analysis points at the creation of a “tunnel vision” for consumers and visitors, which promotes Jewish hegemony in the city and simultaneous detachment from Palestinian spaces and histories. This tunnel vision situates the viewers in physical and simulated enclaves within the city, creating a relationship of distance and elevation to promote their embodied identification with Israel's Judaizing mission for the area, primarily the Holy Basin. This mode of viewing Jerusalem is evocative of Israel's post‐second intifada policies and the concurrent rise of right‐wing ideologies, which relegate to the margins alternative readings of the contested urban landscape.     

Beautiful face,beautiful place: relational geographies and gender in cosmetic surgery tourism websites

Cosmetic surgery tourism is a significant and growing area of medical tourism. This article explores the gendered construction of cosmetic surgery tourism in different geographical locations through an analysis of destination websites in Spain, the Czech Republic and Thailand. We examine the ways in which gender and other intersections of identity interact with notions of space, place and travel to construct particular locations and cosmetic surgery tourist experiences. The relational geographies of skill, regulation and hygiene in discourses of cosmetic surgery risk are also explored. We conclude that accounts producing cosmetic surgery tourism as undifferentiated experience of ‘non-place’ fail to acknowledge the complex constructions of specific destinations in promotional materials targeting international consumers in a global marketplace.