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This paper explores past connections of Aboriginal people within what is now known as the Wet Tropics, a coastal strip of tropical rainforest in northeast Australia. As a result of historical and ethnographic descriptions the rainforest is often defined as a 'cultural zone'. The proclamation of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, based on environmental parameters, has exaggerated the idea of the rainforest as a cultural boundary. We propose that in the past, Aboriginal connections were multifaceted, multifunctional and multidirectional, extending beyond the Wet Tropics boundaries. We use rock art to illustrate connections within and beyond the rainforest. For example, decorated shields, an iconic item of rainforest material culture, are depicted in rock art assemblages south of the rainforest boundary. Are the shield paintings out-of-place or do they illustrate networks of connection? We examine rock art motifs found in rainforest areas and compare them with those found in other rock art regions in North Queensland. We identify, for example, that sites located in the eastern rainforest are dominated by painted anthropomorphs (people) and zoomorphs (animals) in the silhouette style similar to figurative rock art of southeast Cape York Peninsula. We suggest that, like other areas, there were connections between cultural groups within the rainforest but that these same groups had links that went beyond this environmental zone. We further propose that the proclamation of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area has particularly influenced non-Aboriginal understandings of the past within this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction raises issues concerning transactions involving Aboriginal artefacts of the North Queensland Wet Tropics. We highlight relationships between artefacts, persons and place, as well as the importance of understanding the nature of exchange and concepts of ownership in the creation and collection of artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the contending issues surrounding the rationale of pre-action protocols (PAPs) with their implementation and efficacy in both jurisdictions of Great Britain and Australia. Topics discussed include PAPs may be effectively adopted by the New Zealand civil justice system in order to enhance civil litigant's access to justice, cooperative conduct with the form of alternate dispute resolution (ADR) and adversarialism has formed a key objective of recent civil justice reforms.

This paper outlines some of the ways early artefact collecting contributed to the definition of the Australian region now known and marketed as the 'World Heritage Wet Tropics'. While others have collected in this region, we focus on the collecting activities of Hermann Klaatsch and the work of Norman Tindale to explore some factors that contributed to their claims that certain artefacts represent a region and its history. We argue that these understandings of region and the past, along with the now widely dispersed artefacts, maintain a lively, albeit transformed, presence in current debates about Aboriginal regional culture, linking assertions of rights to lost and stolen cultural property with notions of large-scale environmental management within the 'Wet Tropics'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the transformation from an archaeological research project to one that focused on Indigenous cultural heritage. The ultimate outcome was the development of a community-based approach for northern Cape York (Australia) that emerged from a partnership between researcher and the indigenous community. The paper particularly focuses on notions of landscape, sites and artefacts and the ways in which archaeological and indigenous perspectives of these are both different and similar. It challenges the idea that artefacts are only central for archaeologists, presenting a case study illustrating that they can also be important within Indigenous frameworks. These insights emerged from a deeper understanding of Indigenous local heritage that was only possible within a community-based approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine the concept of 'indigenous knowledge' as it is currently used in resource management discourse. In the process of engaging with government agents and researchers in the bureaucracy of resource management, indigenous knowledge is a powerful concept in the legitimization of local indigenous practice as well as the recognition of resource and socio-environmental management aspirations. Our use of the phrase 'management speak' frames our analysis of these bureaucratic engagements as process (management) and dialogue, rather than a 'space'. We do so in order to gain insights into the politics and practice of these engagements that might go beyond recognition of indigenous interests and toward more practical approaches. Our discussion draws on research conducted at Yarrabah Aboriginal Community in northern Queensland in relation to marine resource management in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outside the Antipodes, Australian archaeology is best known as an archaeology of the distant Palaeolithic past. However, where communities have been closely involved in developing and undertaking archaeological research programs, the focus of archaeological research has been radically different, often dealing with the archaeology of the recent, remembered past and crossing disciplinary boundaries between Aboriginal and historical archaeology. Distinguishing between 'community-based archaeology' and reactive or 'consent-based' community involvement in archaeology,this paper reviews the state of archaeology and its engagement with communities in Australia. Through several case studies in both indigenous and post-contact archaeology, it demonstrates the way in which community-based research and practise is changing what it is we think of as 'archaeology' in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]