Hunting magic, maintenance ceremonies and increase sites exploring traditional management systems for marine resources in northern Cape York Peninsula

Emerging archaeological evidence from archaeological sites in northern Cape York has the potential to shed light on indigenous cultural practices relating to turtle hunting. This paper explores the nexus between cultural practice and indigenous ecological knowledge and 'lost' knowledge which has implications for how Traditional Owners may chose to manage resources today. Often when we hear of Indigenous environmental management techniques the focus is on management 'practices' e.g mosaic burning, rather than 'systems'. While not denying that some practices may be useful or cost effective alternatives to other 'western science' based land management practices the question needs to be asked: how effective can these be in ecosystem management if adopted in isolation of the other components of Indigenous management systems? Lines (2006) has challenged the efficacy of Indigenous management systems and questioned their sustainability but provides little evidence that he understands the complexity of such systems and the interrelationship of nature and culture, or indeed that he believes such systems exist. A more valid question is, what happens to these complex systems when key elements are discontinued, lost or destroyed? Perhaps if we, in partnership with Aboriginal communities, explore the changes to such systems over time we can begin to understand the consequences of these changes and the implications for long term species and ecosystem management. This paper provides preliminary outcomes of a current archaeological project which may further this discussion. At the time when European's were first recording observations along the Cape York Peninsula coastline, Aboriginal people and their Torres Strait Islander neighbours were hunting and consuming turtle and dugong in numbers great enough to be remarked on. Sites comprising heaped turtle and dugong bones were noted and in some cases sketched. Populations of both animals were however extremely healthy, the size of herds of dugong (Thorne 1876; Jackson et al 2001) and the proliferation of turtle were also remarked on. Was this just some kind of coincidence or was there an Indigenous system in place that actively contributed to the sustainability of this resource

Book review: Archaeology Matters: action archaeology in the modern world by Jeremy A. Sabloff, Left Coast Press

This book is written primarily for first year archaeology students and the general public. It attempts to address the perennial question of 'what use is a study of archaeology to society today?

Social value, the cultural component in natural resource management

This article explores an issue of increasing relevance to protected area management, the identification of social value and the incorporation of such values into protected area management strategies. Fundamental to this is an understanding of the beleaguered concepts of "community" and "community value" or "social value". The cultural attachment of people to landscapes or places is discussed with a view to leading protected area managers to a recognition of cultural (social) value which may be summarised as: * Acceptance that it is a base level responsibility of protected area management agencies in Australia to recognise and conserve all heritage values (i.e. both cultural and natural) in a particular landscape (or seascape). * Recognition that cultural heritage values include the social attachment of people to landscapes, landscape elements and associated cultural practice. * Extension of the existing practice of documenting, researching and auditing the nature, range and conservation status of natural heritage to achieve a similar level of knowledge and status of cultural heritage. * Acceptance that sound and equitable conservation outcomes rely not only on educating the public but also in learning from them, particularly in relation to cultural heritage values and the nature of attachment to landscape

Roger Llewellyn Dunmore Cribb Obituary (1948 - 2007)

This publication does not have an abstract. The first two paragraphs of this article are displayed as the abstract. Many people knew Roger Cribb, or we thought we did. Since he died on Sunday 26 August 2007 in Cairns, north Queensland, a variety of people have written about the Roger they knew (for example, the obituaries by his ex-wife and friend Gulcin Cribb (2007) and the Wikipedia page put together by Bruce White (2007)). The questions many of us now ask ourselves are 'How many Rogers were there?' and 'Where did the Roger we know fit in?' I was asked to write this obituary and I was happy to do so as I admired Roger's tenacity and his genuine concern for Aboriginal peoples in Cape York. However, I felt inadequate for the task on my own and so sought input from two other north Queenslanders who knew him well, Bruce White and George Skeene. Bruce worked with Roger at Tharpuntoo Legal Service and George is a Yirrganydji Traditional Owner with whom Roger worked on a voluntary basis over many years, helping him to map and record the archaeological sites of his people

18 April 2011 – International day for monuments and sites: the cultural heritage of water

In response to a proposal by ICOMOS, 18 April was designated as the International Day for Monuments and Sites by UNESCO in 1982. Each year a theme is selected to help focus the celebration and promotion of cultural heritage across the world. The aim is to explore cultural heritage beyond the select group of sites on the World Heritage List to encourage local communities and individuals to consider the importance of cultural heritage to their lives, identities and communities. The theme agreed for 2011 is the "Cultural Heritage of Water". Water is one of the key resources required to sustain life. It has led to the development and generation of significant material culture in the form of items, technology and places. How to obtain it, how to store it, how to harness its power and conserve it has motivated human endeavour in a myriad of ways. It has also been the catalyst for the development of significant cultural practices which have generated intangible cultural heritage values. It has inspired poetry, literature, artistic endeavour such as painting, dance and sculpture. It has informed and inspired the development of philosophies and religious practice. The cultural heritage of water, therefore relates not only to the technology and architecture that humankind has developed to manage, utilise and celebrate its life giving properties but also to those intangible values that have shaped our beliefs and practices. This essay cannot cover completely the complexity and individuality of humankind's relationship with water. It does however attempt to illustrate this complexity in order to encourage a broad exploration of the heritage of water that goes beyond a mere appreciation of the technology that has been developed to utilise, consume, manage and travel over it and must include consideration of the intangible values associated with water. These intangible values of spirituality, aesthetics, grief and conquest, inspire and give meaning to the range of cultural practices, structures and objects that relate to humanity's relationship with water and which in turn comprise our cultural heritage

The Nakanai Mountain Ranges of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea

This E-Book on the Nakanai Mountains of East New Britain is in four parts. The first section provides an overview of the karst and cave attributes which led to the listing of Nakanai on the Tentative World Heritage List in a Serial Site known as The Sublime Karsts of Papua New Guinea. The next section provides a brief history of the region involving European encounters. This is followed with a brief overview of the archaeology of East New Britain. The fourth section highlights some of the unique flora and fauna of the Nakanai. The final section includes the UNESCO Justification for Significance on the Tentative World Heritage List

The Nakanai Mountain Ranges of East New Britain Papua New Guinea. E: Booklet Version 2

NOTES ON THE E-BOOKLET VERSION TWO Between 2016- 2019, a multidisciplinary team of researchers1 from Australia and Papua New Guinea worked in collaboration with local communities to document the cultural values of the Nakanai Mountains and their inextricable link to the spectacular natural landscape. This research aims to contribute to a standalone nomination to the UNESCCO Tentative World Heritage List of the Nakanai Karst Area (NKA) and elevate its recognition as a cultural landscape of outstanding significance. The research team included both anthropologists and archaeologists. Further anthropological and archaeological research is likely to yield further evidence of the richly diverse cultural values of the area. Between July 2018 - December 2019, researchers from James Cook University (JCU) in collaboration with postgraduate researchers from the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) were commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme2 in conjunction with the Conservation, Environment Protection Authority to generate awareness of protected area planning processes and to facilitate the gazettal of four Community Protected Areas around Jacquinot Bay and Central Inland Pomio. These protected area processes are ongoing

Editorial: extreme heritage (part 2)

This is the second albeit belated issue of Historic Environment devoted to selected papers based on those presented at the conference eXtreme heritage: managing heritage in the face of climatic extremes, natural disasters and military conflicts in tropical, desert, polar and off-world landscapes which was held in Cairns, Australia in 2007.\ud \ud The focus of the papers in this volume range across the themes of the conference and the geographical distribution of the case studies reported spread across Australia, south-east Asia and the Pacific. Overall there is a focus on the Asia/Pacific tropical region with the majority of papers exploring issues related to heritage places in tropical environments

Ethics of commercial archaeology: Australia

[Extract] Having recently returned to full-time employment in commercial archaeology after a period of seven years in academia, the ethics of commercial archaeology is a subject at the forefront of my mind. A lot has been written about the ethical issues involved in indigenous heritage especially the scenario where non-indigenous practitioners and regulators are making decisions regarding the heritage of indigenous people (e.g., Langford 1983; Byrne 1993, 1996; Smith 2004). The ethical dilemmas are obvious in that context; however, while this entry touches on this area, it focusses more broadly on a range of ethical issues including those relevant to the often less-critiqued area of non-indigenous heritage also referred to as historical heritage or the heritage of settler societies. In such fields the archaeologist is often of the same cultural (or a derivative) background as the people who created the heritage. They therefore have a privileged role in studying the cultural remains as insiders, but to some extent since archaeologists are dealing with the heritage of past societies, are we not always at a fundamental level "outsiders"? This entry adopts a consciously provocative stance in highlighting many of the issues that face those working in commercial archaeology in Australia; while doing this I acknowledge that there are archaeologists in Australia who are conscious of many if not all of the issues raised and who attempt to address these in their daily practice, and I also acknowledge that we are all to a greater or lesser extent constrained by the economic and regulatory framework in which the industry operates