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The serial property, Australian Convict Sites, was recognised as ‘world heritage’ by UNESCO in 2010 and consists of eleven penal sites connected to Australia’s convict past. One of those eleven sit...

As a place of heritage, the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania, Australia, provides a substantial representation of a colonial landscape. Principally associated with Australia’s convict history,...

This systematic review aims to understand the impact of heritage tourism on sustainable community development, including the health and wellbeing of local host communities. The protocol is guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocols (PRISMA-P) guidelines. It highlights the scope and methodology for the systematic review to be conducted. Studies will be included if they: (i) were conducted in English; (ii) were published between January 2000 and December 2018; (iii) used quantitative and/or qualitative methods; and (iv) analysed the impact of heritage tourism on sustainable community development and/or the health of local host communities. Data extraction will be informed by Cochrane Collaboration. The quality of evidence of the studies included will be assessed using validated tools. Findings will be summarised into themes and narrated. The systematic review will establish the impact of heritage tourism on sustainable community development including health and well-being. It also aims provide a theoretical framework which will inform recommendations to improve the life-worlds of local host communities and moderate any tensions between the expanding heritage reach of states and the maintenance of customary and traditional value systems, community governance structures, and associated community development and health benefits.

Ceramic containers, intentionally deposited into wetlands, offer detailed insights into Early Neolithic culinary practices. Additionally, they are key for ascertaining the Neolithisation process in Denmark since they appear to form a typo-chronological sequence. Here, we use a combination of organic residue analysis (ORA) of pottery alongside Bayesian chronological modelling of the radiocarbon dates obtained on these vessels to explore the initial stages of votive deposition in wetlands, a practice that stretches from the Mesolithic to the onset of Christianity in Northern Europe. We consider 34 Early-Middle Neolithic (c. 3900–2350 cal BC) ‘bog pots’ from Denmark, of which 20 have ORA data, and 26 have been dated directly. Carbonised surface residues and absorbed lipids from powdered sherds were analysed using a combination of bulk carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and GC-combustion-isotope ratio MS (GC-C-IRMS). The molecular and isotopic compositions of the analysed samples revealed the presence of aquatic, ruminant carcass and dairy fats as well as plant waxes with the majority containing mixtures thereof. Dairy fats were present from the onset of the Funnel Beaker culture, whilst aquatic foods, prevalent at the close of the preceding Mesolithic period, continued to be processed in pottery for the following thousand years.

This photo essay explores intimations of Nepal’s heritage – tangible, intangible and ‘living’ – with a focus on the earthquake-ravaged city of Kathmandu. Linking heritage with wider observations ab...

In the fields with which we are most familiar (archaeology and heritage studies), agitations for Indigenous land rights and the emergence of an interest in environmentalism are often traced, togeth...

The goal of this contribution is to stimulate a wider reflection on the role of food consumption practices throughout prehistory. We focussed on the Jōmon communities of Hokkaidō Island in Northern Japan since these mobile foragers underwent a process of economic diversification and intensification, eventually leading to higher levels of sedentism across the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Moreover, dynamic social settings and expansion of the subsistence base at the start of the Holocene would have provided rich opportunities for novelfood combinations, and potentially, the rise of diverse regional cuisines. We investigated tool kits and resource landscapes, and sampled pottery from a range of sites, phases and regions. We then applied organic residueanalysis to confirm the actual spatiotemporal patterning in cuisine. Although we predicted that ruminants and nuts would have played a major role in local cuisine, especially in inland areas, our results indicate that aquaticresources were central to pottery-based cuisines across the island, and that other food groups had probably been processed in other ways. While organic residue analysis enabled us to reconstruct some major patterns in Jōmoncuisine, we conclude that archaeologists will need to look “beyond the cooking pot” to fully appreciate the full diversity of local foodways.

For centuries, if not millennia, the north–south valley systems of Nepal’s Himalayas have acted as a capillary network for communication, exchange, veneration, discriminating cultural difference an...

This article explores the evidence for settlement and mobility within and across the Nepalese Himalayas, focusing on the period from 30 kya to the emergence of early states in the 1st millennium BC. Although trade routes around the Himalayas, such as those of the silk roads, have shaped a sense of the mountains as a marginal and inaccessible landscape, I argue that the high-altitude/high-relief landscape is by no means a barrier to exchange and mobility. Though relatively little archaeological fieldwork has been undertaken in the Himalayas of Nepal, this article presents the tentative evidence for: (1) the movement of prehistoric exchange items and (2) settlement activity and exchange infrastructure. In order to achieve this wider contextual evidence is drawn from East and South Asian exchange networks from the 14th to 1st millennia BC, particularly with respect to plant dispersals, and domestication episodes for which there is increasingly compelling biomolecular evidence. This evidence is collated in order to steer archaeological research questions for the Himalayan region, asking: what evidence is there for the development of settlement, mobility and exchange in the Nepalese Himalayas during prehistory?

This photo essay explores the notion of cultural resiliency in the Nepali Himalayas, and carries a geographic focus that is centred on the village of Langtang. Our interest in capturing this area photographically emerges from several recent fieldwork excursions to Nepal and associated experiences of trekking through two distinct areas: the Langtang Valley and the Annapurna Conservation Area. During our visits to each area, we were struck by local efforts to secure a future in a rapidly changing environment. In the Annapurnas, an overarching story of encroaching development emerges, which has destabilised the fragile balance between conservation and development. In Langtang, by contrast, there is a more positive testimony of nearly half a century of cultural compromises necessary for ecological security (e.g., regulation of medicinal plant harvesting), entailing cultural adaptations into a more diverse range of vocational enterprises (like a community cheese-making factory, tourism and so forth). Our purpose in this essay is to engage with, and illustrate, some of the differences between the two.

This chapter explores how women encounter mountaineering and the affective dimensions of the unknown in what is an essentially masculinized environment. Mountaineers pursue risk, seeking adventures that present challenges beyond what is known both physically and intellectually. Mountaineering has long been acknowledged as a masculine endeavour. Historically, it provided white Western men with an opportunity to 'perform adventurous masculinities', with many accounts of the heroic deeds performed by men dominating bookshelves, cinemas and other media. Participation in mountaineering is a radical form of escape from everyday routines, pursuing 'otherness' through sensations of risk; or, as Lyng describes it, 'edgework'. Lyng's conceptualization of 'edgework' points to the sensations associated with life-and-death situations and how these act to disrupt the social self. While a mountaineer's perception of their world is shaped by many people, places, objects and ideas, their sense of a mountain-place can be known only to them

Mekong Delta Region of Vietnam is forecasted to have one of world’s most severe impacts from climate change. There is a big knowledge gap in research on climate change impacts on tourism in this area. While climate change’s impacts on agriculture and fisheries have received much attention from authorities and researchers, impacts on tourism have largely been ignored. This paper presents findings from a field study the authors conducted to fill the research gap on climate change’s impact on tourism in Mekong River Delta. The study based on spatial analysis and questionnaires and interviews of local tourism leaders, tourism businesses and tourists discovered that climate change is a real challenge for region’s tourism businesses. Vulnerable tourism businesses in low and flat delta such as Mekong needs more attention and practical actions from international organizations and local entities in the era of climate change threats.

Pottery was a hunter-gatherer innovation that first emerged in East Asia between 20,000 and 12,000 calibrated years before present(1,2) (cal BP), towards the end of the Late Pleistocene epoch, a period of time when humans were adjusting to changing climates and new environments. Ceramic container technologies were one of a range of late glacial adaptations that were pivotal to structuring subsequent cultural trajectories in different regions of the world, but the reasons for their emergence and widespread uptake are poorly understood. The first ceramic containers must have provided prehistoric hunter-gatherers with attractive new strategies for processing and consuming foodstuffs, but virtually nothing is known of how early pots were used. Here we report the chemical analysis of food residues associated with Late Pleistocene pottery, focusing on one of the best-studied prehistoric ceramic sequences in the world, the Japanese Jomon. We demonstrate that lipids can be recovered reliably from charred surface deposits adhering to pottery dating from about 15,000 to 11,800 cal BP (the Incipient Jomon period), the oldest pottery so far investigated, and that in most cases these organic compounds are unequivocally derived from processing freshwater and marine organisms. Stable isotope data support the lipid evidence and suggest that most of the 101 charred deposits analysed, from across the major islands of Japan, were derived from high-trophic-level aquatic food. Productive aquatic ecotones were heavily exploited by late glacial foragers(3), perhaps providing an initial impetus for investment in ceramic container technology, and paving the way for further intensification of pottery use by hunter-gatherers in the early Holocene epoch. Now that we have shown that it is possible to analyse organic residues from some of the world's earliest ceramic vessels, the subsequent development of this critical technology can be clarified through further widespread testing of hunter-gatherer pottery from later periods.

Shallow oval bowls used on the Baltic coast in the Mesolithic have been suggested as oil lamps, burning animal fat. Here researchers confirm the use of four coastal examples as lamps burning blubber—the fat of marine animals, while an inland example burned fat from terrestrial mammals or freshwater aquatics—perhaps eels. The authors use a combination of lipid biomarker and bulk and single-compound carbon isotope analysis to indicate the origin of the residues in these vessels.

Starch granules are being successfully recovered from an increasing range of artefacts. Here we present the recovery of starches from carbonised ceramic ‘foodcrusts’ from late Mesolithic–early Neolithic residues at the site of Neustadt in northern Germany. A method for investigating background loading of residues with contaminant starches is proposed by comparing interior ‘foodcrusts’ versus exterior ‘sooting’, for the purposes of eliminating samples with insignificant quantities of grains from subsequent identification procedures. The classification of starches to plant taxon is traditionally achieved by manual observations and measurement of nominal and ratio morphological variables. Here, we present a method for the automated classification of granules, using software developed in-house. The results show that when multiple granules are considered, the species selected as modern reference examples can be classified to high levels of specificity. When applied to the archaeological samples we show that wild plant resources persist in importance across the transition to agriculture, with high proportions of granule forms consistent with acorn (Quercus sp.) occurring in all samples. Hazelnut (Corylus avellana) types are less well-represented suggesting it was not an important food in the context of pottery, and may have been over-represented in the repertoire of hunter–gatherer resources. Cereals are not represented in any of the samples, supporting the notion that their adoption may have been a slow process, occurring more gradually than for other domesticated foods, or that they were not initially processed in ceramic vessels.

This chapter reports on a collaborative community project to restore a Tibetan Buddhist monastery (gompa) in the village of Langtang, Nepal. The restoration work has been entirely local led and executed by traditional artisans. Through a combined analysis of selective changes to the materiality of the gompa, as well as 19 unstructured interviews with local monastery users, the relationship between materiality, antiquity and authenticity will be explored from an indigenous standpoint. These investigations are a move towards framing a Langtangpa (people of Langtang) notion of heritage. Such local representations are timely for heritage policymaking in Nepal, which has seen an increase in ethnic politics in the last decade, as a counterbalance to centralised government authority.

The earliest pots in the world are from East Asia and date to the Late Pleistocene. However, ceramic vessels were only produced in large numbers during the warmer and more stable climatic conditions of the Holocene. It has long been assumed that the expansion of pottery was linked with increased sedentism and exploitation of new resources that became available with the ameliorated climate, but this hypothesis has never been tested. Through chemical analysis of their contents, we herein investigate the use of pottery across an exceptionally long 9,000-y sequence from the Jomon site of Torihama in western Japan, intermittently occupied from the Late Pleistocene to the mid-Holocene. Molecular and isotopic analyses of lipids from 143 vessels provides clear evidence that pottery across this sequence was predominantly used for cooking marine and freshwater resources, with evidence for diversification in the range of aquatic products processed during the Holocene. Conversely, there is little indication that ruminant animals or plants were processed in pottery, although it is evident from the faunal and macrobotanical remains that these foods were heavily exploited. Supported by other residue analysis data from Japan, our results show that the link between pottery and fishing was established in the Late Paleolithic and lasted well into the Holocene, despite environmental and socio-economic change. Cooking aquatic products in pottery represents an enduring social aspect of East Asian hunter-gatherers, a tradition based on a dependable technology for exploiting a sustainable resource in an uncertain and changing world.

In the last two decades scientific techniques have opened up new avenues in archaeological studies of food. In particular, biomolecular approaches generate datasets with fundamentally different resolutions compared to traditional macro-remains. Equipped with these datasets, the authors probe the possibility for discussing new themes in food studies, through an investigation of cuisine. Following a critical review of theoretical approaches to subsistence and prestige food economies, they suggest that cuisine is a social expression of past food evaluation processes. By reconstructing pottery use at two sites that span the transition from foraging to farming in northern Europe (c.4,000 cal BC) using organic residue analysis, they suggest that understanding how food was valued is important in explaining the wider economic changes during this period. The foodstuffs that were carefully chosen to be processed in pottery fulfilled contingent social purposes beyond economic necessity.

Farming transformed societies globally. Yet, despite more than a century of research, there is little consensus on the speed or completeness of this fundamental change and, consequently, on its principal drivers. For Northern Europe, the debate has often centered on the rich archaeological record of the Western Baltic, but even here it is unclear how quickly or completely people abandoned wild terrestrial and marine resources after the introduction of domesticated plants and animals at ∼4000 calibrated years B.C. Ceramic containers are found ubiquitously on these sites and contain remarkably well-preserved lipids derived from the original use of the vessel. Reconstructing culinary practices from this ceramic record can contribute to longstanding debates concerning the origins of farming. Here we present data on the molecular and isotopic characteristics of lipids extracted from 133 ceramic vessels and 100 carbonized surface residues dating to immediately before and after the first evidence of domesticated animals and plants in the Western Baltic. The presence of specific lipid biomarkers, notably ω-( o -alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids, and the isotopic composition of individual n -alkanoic acids clearly show that a significant proportion (∼20%) of ceramic vessels with lipids preserved continued to be used for processing marine and freshwater resources across the transition to agriculture in this region. Although changes in pottery use are immediately evident, our data challenge the popular notions that economies were completely transformed with the arrival of farming and that Neolithic pottery was exclusively associated with produce from domesticated animals and plants.