Cultural Heritage Places Research Articles

A new model to assist in planning for sustainable cultural heritage tourism

AbstractA natural link exists between tourism and cultural heritage management, yet little discourse and debate occurs between them on the sustainability of heritage tourism. What also is missing is a process whereby elements of both areas can be included in the identification and actualisation of the tourism potential of cultural heritage places. This paper presents a new model that is in the process of development, but which has the potential to assist in planning for sustainable cultural heritage tourism. Future testing of the model is likely to make a significant contribution to the advancement of both disciplines and also should help break down barriers between the two. The model is a matrix into which heritage places can be classified as falling into nine general areas of suitability for tourism in terms of their market appeal and ability to withstand the impacts of visitation likely to be associated with that appeal. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Accelerated Climate Change and Australia's Cultural Heritage

In the early 1990's, cultural heritage places were identified as likely to be impacted by accelerated (greenhouse) climate change. Subsequently, both at the national and international levels, cultural heritage issues have not been mentioned in agendas requiring adaptive responses. In this paper it is argued that adaptive responses, which include cultural heritage issues, need to be developed. Numerous sites could potentially be impacted by accelerated climate change, particularly in coastal locations. These sites range from indigenous middens, to early European coastal engineering structures. Coastal middens in particular, apart from their obvious value to indigenous owners and archaeologists, are a vast store of palaeo-climate, sea level and biological systems information. They also have ecotourism values. Environmental managers need to be made aware of these broad heritage values, and cultural heritage managers need to assess their professional capabilities to deal with conservation and salvage issues if environmental change is rapid. There is a critical need to make indigenous owners aware of these issues and involve them at all levels of the debate.

Cultural heritage conservation during emergency management: luxury or necessity?

Annually, natural disasters cause loss of life, damage to property, and damage to the environment. Concomitant is damage to the cultural heritage property, both items and places. Yet in the wake of a disaster, containment and response efforts put additional cultural resources at risk--usually due to ignorance rather than malice on the part of the disaster manager or the property owners. This paper reviews the effects of natural disasters on heritage sites and argues for increased awareness and training for disaster managers.

Buffering external threats to heritage conservation areas: a planner's perspective

This paper centres on the fundamental issue of environmental conservation from a planning perspective. For many years planners have been criticised for not integrating conservation with the need for development with one usually occurring in isolation to the other. Thus, this paper reviews environmental planning to disclose a gap that may exist in current practice in relation to protection of cultural heritage places from threats generated within their surrounds. As conservation of the built and natural environment confronts in practice common problems, it is suggested that a technique applied in natural heritage protection to ‘buffer’ national parks from external threats occurring outside the legal bounds of protected places can be adapted to the urban environment in the protection of cultural heritage. This technique is the buffer zone planning (BZP) technique developed by Kozlowski and Ptaszycka-Jackowska. From the limited application that has been undertaken of the technique as applied to heritage conservation and which is summarised here, it is evident that the technique shows certain strengths suggesting that with further development BZP may become an important planning tool in conserving built heritage. This paper therefore presents the findings of this application in the hope that it will generate constructive discussions in relation to the technique in an urban application.

Balancing use and preservation in cultural heritage management

The management of cultural heritage places is compared with natural area management. Differences stem from the disciplines of the managers, and that cultural heritage resources are non‐renewable. In the conservation of cultural resources there is a strong reliance on preservation, and the exclusion of activities which may reduce heritage value. This results in a tendency to remove heritage sites and items from the experience of the community which ‘owns’ the heritage. The conservation strategy for natural systems of acquiring the highly significant, as well as representative samples of biogeography in protected areas has lessons for heritage conservation. At the site level, heritage management rarely uses the range of tools potentially available, largely because of the reliance and emphasis on preservation. The paper proposes that greater community acceptance of heritage conservation will result in a more definitive expression of value and significance, and in tying this to function. Tools to manage the use of significant sites to reduce damage are given.

The Ngarrabullgan Homeland Project: Current research in Kuku Djungan country, north Queensland

In 1988, one of us (BD) visited Ngarrabullgan (Mt Mulligm) for the first time. The then lessee of the mountain, Mr Reg Adams, was a particularly conscientious grazier, with family members subscribers of the World Wildlife Fund, keen advocates for the protection of cultural heritage places, and firm believers that the cattle property containing Ngarrabullgan (Kondaparinga Station) should be returned to its rightful owners, the Kuku Djungan Aboriginal people. Within four years of this initial visit, Kondaparinga Station was for sale. Despite a higher bid by a Japanese firm (who had already made plans for a tourist resort on the mountain), an 11th hour deal between the recently formed Kuku Djungan Aboriginal Corporation and the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage secured the mountain and surrounding areas for the traditional owners (via ATSIC funding - the history of this deal will be recounted elsewhere). Suffice it to say here that this tum of events had a major outcome for archaeological practice in the region, for during our first archaeological field visit to the area, one of us (BD) was directed to Ngarrabullgan Cave by Kuku Djungan Elder, Mr John Grainer Snr (also Chairperson of both the Kuku Djungan Aboriginal Corporation and the North Queensland Aboriginal Land Council). The ensuing excavation soon revealed one of the oldest radiocarbon dated Aboriginal sites in Australia, with a conventional radiocarbon date of >37,170 BP (David 1993). Â