Cultural Heritage by Patrick Daly
Climate, 2022
Changing weather patterns, increasing frequency and intensity of natural hazards, and rising sea ... more Changing weather patterns, increasing frequency and intensity of natural hazards, and rising sea levels associated with global climate change have the potential to threaten cultural heritage sites worldwide. This is especially the case for maritime heritage sites located in the low-lying coastal and delta regions of Asia. Maritime heritage can reflect both highly localized cultural products based on the coupling of people and maritime environments and the historic footprints of complex maritime networks that connect people, ideas, and material over vast distances, creating unique cultural spheres. Furthermore, maritime heritage sites potentially serve as or contain records of how past societies have been impacted by and adapted to past environmental stress. Therefore, their degradation threatens local/regional/global cultural patrimony as well as evidence of human resilience and fragility in the face of environmental change. This makes a strong case for urgent preservation. However, the possible damage caused by climate change and the scale of vulnerable maritime heritage pose seemingly insurmountable challenges. In this paper, we present the ways in which maritime heritage sites across Asia are vulnerable to environmental stresses, such as changing sea levels, coastal erosion, flooding, and storm surges. Our objective is to draw upon our experience documenting endangered cultural heritage across South and Southeast Asia to illustrate that there are unique conceptual and practical characteristics of maritime heritage that complicate effective management and conservation efforts on the scale required to prevent massive loss by climate change. We conclude by stressing the need to reconceptualize debates about the custody and stewardship of maritime heritage and the urgency of employing a wide range of innovative preservation solutions to ensure maritime patrimony is not lost to the rising tides.
Joho Chishiki Gakkaishi, 2021
Recent developments have made technologies such as LiDAR and photogrammetry visualizations more w... more Recent developments have made technologies such as LiDAR and photogrammetry visualizations more widely accessible to scholars in the humanities. This, in turn, is currently facilitating the production of larger and more complex data sets than those that have heretofore been associated with Digital Humanities. This new turn has stimulated innovative work in a number of fields, but also given rise to new challenges for researchers, IT departments, and university libraries. This paper highlights a number of such issues related to the management of research data with reference to the work the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey (MAHS) based at Kyoto University's Center for Southeast Asian Studies. The MAHS uses traditional archaeological survey techniques while also incorporating data capture through newer technologies of LiDAR scanning, RTK/GIS, digital photography and video, photogrammetry, CAD, and 3D modelling to produce interactive visualizations, IIIF deep-zoom digitized manuscripts, oral history recordings, architectural plans and elevations, and orthophotomaps integrated into robust records in an Arches database. Establishing this project at Kyoto University has highlighted the importance of developing new hardware infrastructure, policy guidelines, and support for the long-term management of the digital knowledge resources as crucial aspects of the institutional infrastructure for research universities in the future.
Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia
Across Asia today, rapid economic and social change means the region's heritage is simultaneously... more Across Asia today, rapid economic and social change means the region's heritage is simultaneously under threat and undergoing a revival as never before. This volume examines heritage as a key component in the unfolding modernities of Asia, moving between analytical scales to address questions of tourism, urban planning, national or ethnic expressions of identity, conflict, memorialization, and biodiversity.
Disasters, Hazards & Reconstruction by Patrick Daly
Progress in Disaster Science, 2024
Starting in early 2020, countries around the world imposed mitigation measures to reduce transmis... more Starting in early 2020, countries around the world imposed mitigation measures to reduce transmission of COVID-19 including social distancing; closing public transport, schools, and non-essential businesses; enhanced hygiene; face masks; temperature monitoring; quarantining; and contact tracing. These mitigation measures helped reduce loss of life, but also disrupted the lives of billions of people. Here we assess whether mitigation measures used to manage a disaster can also have negative impacts that disproportionately burden vulnerable subsets of a population. We use data from a survey of Singaporean citizens and permanent residents during the lockdown period between April and July 2020 to evaluate the social and economic impacts of Singapore's COVID-19 mitigation measures. Our results show that over 60 % of the population experienced negative impacts on their social lives and 40 % on household economics. Bayesian Hierarchical Logistic Regress reveals that the negative economic impacts of the mitigation measures were partly influenced by socioeconomic and demographic factors that align with underlying societal vulnerabilities. Our findings suggest that when dealing with large-scale crisis' such as COVID-19, slow-onset disasters, and climate change, some of the burdens of mitigation measure can constitute a crisis in their own right which could disproportionately impact vulnerable segments of the population.
Marine Geology, 2023
On 28th September 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake occurred on the Palu-Koro strike slip fault ne... more On 28th September 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake occurred on the Palu-Koro strike slip fault near Palu,
Indonesia. Shortly after, large tsunami waves generated by the earthquake and the submarine landslides it
triggered, washed into Palu Bay. Here, we describe sediment characteristics of the tsunami deposits and present
wave height models to provide a modern analogue for tsunamis occurring on strike slip faults. We analyzed 51
sediment samples from 21 sampling points on two transects at Palu City and one transect at Pantaloan. At Palu
City, the tsunami inundated between 250 and 270 m inland. Sediments were massive, with landward fining from
coarse sands (φ 0) to fine sands (φ 3.7) and weak upward fining sequences (by up to 1 φ). At Pantaloan the
tsunami inundated up to 275 m inland. Sediments were massive, with landward fining from a few grains of gravel
(φ 2) and coarse sands (φ 0.5) to fine sands (φ 2.5) and weak upward fining sequences (by up to 1 φ). Based on
the sediment data the TSUFLIND model predicted: at Palu city flow depths of 1 to 8 m, and flow velocities up to
3.9 m/s; and at Pantoloan flow depths of 2 to 8 m, and flow velocities up 3.8 m/s. The boulder transport model
was applied to data from heavy concrete blocks (0.8 to 4.9 tons) deposited by the tsunami between 46 and 125 m
inland, and predicted flow depths of 0.8 to 4.3 m and flow velocities up to 5.6 m/s. The rapid attenuation inland
of the tsunami flow depth is consistent with the event being partially generated by landslides caused by the Palu-
Donggala earthquake. A study of Dutch colonial archives and historical data reveals at least six tsunami events
have occurred in or near Palu Bay since 1920, suggesting a very short return period for such events, and a
significant tsunami hazard to the area.
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2023
The permanent relocation of persons from areas threatened by environmental stress is widely seen ... more The permanent relocation of persons from areas threatened by environmental stress is widely seen within the international humanitarian sector as problematic due to negative social and economic impacts. However, relocation is increasingly seen as a likely, if unfortunate, response to climate change as rising sea-levels, changing ecological conditions, and increasingly intense disasters create powerful push factors. The more dramatic examples of environmental migration focus on long-distance movements, including crossing national borders, which raise issues about
the importance of social capital for migrants trying to build community cohesion and integrate into different cultural contexts. However, it is likely that most relocation because of environment stress will occur at sub-national to very local geographic scales, similar to what happens after
large-scale disasters, meaning that persons might be resettled within familiar cultural, linguistic, and religious contexts. In this paper we use qualitative data collected in 12 resettlement complexes built in Aceh, Indonesia for persons displaced by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami to analyze the importance of social capital for building cohesion within resettlement complexes and between resettlement complexes and host communities. We find that even though tsunami-affected persons were generally relocated less than 20 km from their pre-tsunami homes, there were clear social distinctions between resettled persons and host communities, which had practical impacts on integration, access to resources, and participation within local governance structures. We found shared cultural and religious traditions and social practices served as important sources of bonding capital within resettlement complexes. However, the same attributes were less effective as bridging capital between resettlement complexes and their host communities. These findings show that governments and NGOs need to be cautious about underestimating the negative social disruptions caused by short-distance relocation and the importance of bonding social capital for
fostering stable and sustainable resettlement communities.
Progress in Disaster Science, 2023
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused extensive loss of life and disrupted family units, leaving l... more The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused extensive loss of life and disrupted family units, leaving large numbers of widows, widowers, and orphans. While it is common to identify disaster widows and orphans as potentially vulnerable groups, there has been limited research about how families are reconstructed after a major disaster. The main objective of this paper is to better understand what factors motivate persons who lost a spouse in a disaster to either remarry or stay single. We use quantitative data from a statistically representative survey of tsunami-affected households in the Banda Aceh, Aceh Besar, and Aceh Jaya districts in the Aceh province of Indonesia conducted a decade after the tsunami to show that 18% of households reported the death of a spouse during the tsunami. Out of these, 66% of widows/widowers reported marrying again within a decade after the tsunami, with most remarried within the first three years after the disaster. We use qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 36 widows and widowers to identify motivations behind the decision to remarry or stay single. We found that widows were most likely to get remarried to provide economic security, support for their surviving children, and because of concerns about their reputation if they were unmarried. Widowers were more likely to remarry to secure domestic support and caregiving for themselves as they got older and to help them care for their surviving children. Some widows and widowers decided not to remarry because of concerns about assuming additional financial liabilities, distressing their surviving children, and (for women) giving up personal freedoms. Our research on the re-marriage decisions of tsunami widows and widowers shows that very personal decisions about family should be seen within the framework of household and community resilience.
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2023
The 2015 Nepal earthquakes devastated the Kathmandu Valley and exposed the challenges of conservi... more The 2015 Nepal earthquakes devastated the Kathmandu Valley and exposed the challenges of conserving andrestoring architectural heritage in historic urban neighborhoods damaged by disasters, while also trying to rapidly rebuild houses, revitalize livelihoods, and reduce vulnerabilities to future hazards. In this paper we use quantitative and qualitative data to investigate how traditional housing was transformed during the post-earthquake reconstruction of four historic neighborhoods in the Kathmandu Valley. We assess how traditional housing stock in these neighborhoods was transformed by a combination of the direct impact of the earthquake; the enforcement of seismic-resistant modern building technology; the costs and logistics of rebuilding; and the priorities of local residents. Our findings indicate that the enforcement of seismic safety building codes and the expense of incorporating traditional architectural elements led to notable changes to the tangible cultural heritage of Kathmandu's historic urban neighborhoods, but likely also improved seismic safety.
Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 2022
River deltas are strongly affected by demographic growth and by the intensification of land use. ... more River deltas are strongly affected by demographic growth and by the intensification of land use. The migration of deltaic coastlines is often rapid, threatening urban settlements, coastal farming, and coastal biotopes. Some deltas benefit from centuries of monitoring, such that the evolution of their coastline is well documented. For most deltas, however, such long records do not exist. The study of their geomorphological
NTS Insight, 2021
During the COVID-19 pandemic the Singapore government instituted a series of mitigation measures ... more During the COVID-19 pandemic the Singapore government instituted a series of mitigation measures to limit local COVID-19 transmission. These mitigation measures, especially during the peak of the official ‘Circuit Breaker’ period between April and June 2020, helped contain the pandemic but also caused significant social and economic disruptions. Singapore experienced high levels of compliance with these mandatory measures. However, more insight is needed into how residents within Singapore perceived the efficacy and value of these mitigation measures and how they weighted the potential cost-benefits of the burdens of the mitigation measures versus the potential personal and communal health benefits. This NTS Insight presents data from a representative survey on the perceptions of Singaporean citizens and permanent residents on COVID-19 mitigation measures conducted between May and July 2020. Our results show consistently high levels of agreement that the Singapore government was handling the COVID-19 crisis well or very well. We found consistently high levels of support for some mitigation measures and more guarded support for others. These levels of support are in some cases influenced by demographic variables. Our data shows that people believe the government should prioritize public health over economic and other considerations when formulating COVID- 19 policy. Our data also shows a high level of willingness to continue some of the main mitigation measures (social distancing, wearing masks, health screening, etc.) for longer as needed, but with some fatigue with home-based learning. Furthermore, we found that respondents put more emphasis on their psychological well-being than their privacy.
NTS Insight, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore posed a number of social and economic challenges for many hous... more The COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore posed a number of social and economic challenges for many households. The Singapore government provided unprecedented support to households and businesses to help them cope with the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 mitigation measures, including cash grants and provision of personal protective equipment. This NTS Insight presents data from a representative survey of Singaporean citizens and permanent residents on access to essential resources and provision of assistance during the Circuit Breaker period from May to July 2020. Our results show that some households lacked access to financial resources, as well as facilities for exercise and working from home. We found that a small, but notable, number of respondents reported lack of food, medical supplies, and other vital resources. Almost half of our respondents reported receiving some sort of support from the government, NGOs, and their personal and professional networks. While support provided by the Singapore government was generally evenly distributed, or distributed on the basis of need, a range of demographic factors shaped access to most other types and sources of non-governmental assistance during the Circuit Breaker period.
NTS Insight, 2021
The Singapore government instituted a set of ‘Circuit Breaker’ (CB) measures in April 2020 to com... more The Singapore government instituted a set of ‘Circuit Breaker’ (CB) measures in April 2020 to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These included restricting international travel, closing non-essential businesses, telecommuting, home-based- learning, wearing faces masks in public spaces, temperature screening, rigorous contract tracing, and isolating infected and exposed persons. The COVID-19 CB measures helped the government control COVID-19 transmission in Singapore but disrupted economic and social life. This NTS Insight presents data from a representative survey on the social and economic impacts of Singapore’s COVID-19 mitigation measures during the CB period on Singaporean citizens and permanent residents from 7 May to 16 July 2020. Our results show that the top three cited disruptions caused by the CB were all social in nature. However, just under half of all respondents reported some form of direct economic disruption – while up to 80% of respondents expressed concerns about their longer-term financial situation. Finally, our disaggregated analysis shows that some of the negative impacts of the CB period disproportionately impacted potentially vulnerable segments of the population.
Modern Asian Studies, 2020
On November , the Bhola Cyclone swept across the southern districts of East Pakistan, kill... more On November , the Bhola Cyclone swept across the southern districts of East Pakistan, killing over , people. Small islands were swept away and dead bodies of humans and cattle lay strewn across the devastated landscape. Following the news of the destruction, journalists, students, artists, and political workers rushed to the affected area with basic relief supplies, without waiting for the Military Law Administration (MLA) to intervene. The cyclone's occurrence just three weeks prior to the first general elections in Pakistan added a new dimension to the already simmering political crisis. The extensive media coverage of the disaster brought the pitiful state of infrastructural development and lack of governance in East Pakistan under local and global scrutiny. The cyclone and the corresponding issues soon became embroiled within the larger political demand for regional autonomy. The MLA came under attack from sections of East Pakistan's politicians, press, and public, as well as international political actors, for its poor disaster governance. This article uses the Bhola Cyclone of as the lens to explore the complex interconnections between environmental disasters and a key issue of governance. While the Bhola Cyclone has been a subject of recent discussions, this article uses * The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2020
This paper presents a field study on the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of livelihood... more This paper presents a field study on the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of livelihood interventions following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia. We assess the extent to which post-tsunami aid in Aceh helped beneficiaries to stabilize and restore their pre-disaster livelihoods, and/or develop new livelihoods. We draw upon qualitative data captured in 183 in-depth interviews and 38 focus group discussions involving village leaders, livelihood aid participants, and NGO workers. Our results show that livelihood assistance helped people stabilize their household finances and partially restore their pre-disaster livelihoods. Furthermore, we found that aid programs were able to help some people without pre-disaster livelihood experience to participate in part-time, ad hoc work. However, aid packages were generally not able to support the development of full-time, sustainable new livelihoods for people lacking pre-disaster training and experience. Our data suggests that it is difficult to conduct efficient and sustainable livelihood development initiatives within the time pressures and current institutional approaches to large-scale post-disaster reconstruction.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2019
Archaeological evidence shows that a predecessor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami devastated nine... more Archaeological evidence shows that a predecessor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami devastated nine distinct communities along a 40-km section of the northern coast of Sumatra in about 1394 CE. Our evidence is the spatial and temporal distribution of tens of thousands of medieval ceramic sherds and over 5,000 carved gravestones, collected and recorded during a systematic landscape archaeology survey near the modern city of Banda Aceh. Only the trading settlement of Lamri, perched on a headland above the reach of the tsunami, survived into and through the subsequent 15th century. It is of historical and political interest that by the 16th century, however, Lamri was abandoned, while low-lying coastal sites destroyed by the 1394 tsunami were resettled as the population center of the new economically and politically ascen-dant Aceh Sultanate. Our evidence implies that the 1394 tsunami was large enough to impact severely many of the areas inundated by the 2004 tsunami and to provoke a significant reconfiguration of the region's political and economic landscape that shaped the history of the region in subsequent centuries. tsunami | Sumatra | Aceh | postdisaster recovery | hazards
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Cultural Heritage by Patrick Daly
Disasters, Hazards & Reconstruction by Patrick Daly
Indonesia. Shortly after, large tsunami waves generated by the earthquake and the submarine landslides it
triggered, washed into Palu Bay. Here, we describe sediment characteristics of the tsunami deposits and present
wave height models to provide a modern analogue for tsunamis occurring on strike slip faults. We analyzed 51
sediment samples from 21 sampling points on two transects at Palu City and one transect at Pantaloan. At Palu
City, the tsunami inundated between 250 and 270 m inland. Sediments were massive, with landward fining from
coarse sands (φ 0) to fine sands (φ 3.7) and weak upward fining sequences (by up to 1 φ). At Pantaloan the
tsunami inundated up to 275 m inland. Sediments were massive, with landward fining from a few grains of gravel
(φ 2) and coarse sands (φ 0.5) to fine sands (φ 2.5) and weak upward fining sequences (by up to 1 φ). Based on
the sediment data the TSUFLIND model predicted: at Palu city flow depths of 1 to 8 m, and flow velocities up to
3.9 m/s; and at Pantoloan flow depths of 2 to 8 m, and flow velocities up 3.8 m/s. The boulder transport model
was applied to data from heavy concrete blocks (0.8 to 4.9 tons) deposited by the tsunami between 46 and 125 m
inland, and predicted flow depths of 0.8 to 4.3 m and flow velocities up to 5.6 m/s. The rapid attenuation inland
of the tsunami flow depth is consistent with the event being partially generated by landslides caused by the Palu-
Donggala earthquake. A study of Dutch colonial archives and historical data reveals at least six tsunami events
have occurred in or near Palu Bay since 1920, suggesting a very short return period for such events, and a
significant tsunami hazard to the area.
the importance of social capital for migrants trying to build community cohesion and integrate into different cultural contexts. However, it is likely that most relocation because of environment stress will occur at sub-national to very local geographic scales, similar to what happens after
large-scale disasters, meaning that persons might be resettled within familiar cultural, linguistic, and religious contexts. In this paper we use qualitative data collected in 12 resettlement complexes built in Aceh, Indonesia for persons displaced by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami to analyze the importance of social capital for building cohesion within resettlement complexes and between resettlement complexes and host communities. We find that even though tsunami-affected persons were generally relocated less than 20 km from their pre-tsunami homes, there were clear social distinctions between resettled persons and host communities, which had practical impacts on integration, access to resources, and participation within local governance structures. We found shared cultural and religious traditions and social practices served as important sources of bonding capital within resettlement complexes. However, the same attributes were less effective as bridging capital between resettlement complexes and their host communities. These findings show that governments and NGOs need to be cautious about underestimating the negative social disruptions caused by short-distance relocation and the importance of bonding social capital for
fostering stable and sustainable resettlement communities.
Indonesia. Shortly after, large tsunami waves generated by the earthquake and the submarine landslides it
triggered, washed into Palu Bay. Here, we describe sediment characteristics of the tsunami deposits and present
wave height models to provide a modern analogue for tsunamis occurring on strike slip faults. We analyzed 51
sediment samples from 21 sampling points on two transects at Palu City and one transect at Pantaloan. At Palu
City, the tsunami inundated between 250 and 270 m inland. Sediments were massive, with landward fining from
coarse sands (φ 0) to fine sands (φ 3.7) and weak upward fining sequences (by up to 1 φ). At Pantaloan the
tsunami inundated up to 275 m inland. Sediments were massive, with landward fining from a few grains of gravel
(φ 2) and coarse sands (φ 0.5) to fine sands (φ 2.5) and weak upward fining sequences (by up to 1 φ). Based on
the sediment data the TSUFLIND model predicted: at Palu city flow depths of 1 to 8 m, and flow velocities up to
3.9 m/s; and at Pantoloan flow depths of 2 to 8 m, and flow velocities up 3.8 m/s. The boulder transport model
was applied to data from heavy concrete blocks (0.8 to 4.9 tons) deposited by the tsunami between 46 and 125 m
inland, and predicted flow depths of 0.8 to 4.3 m and flow velocities up to 5.6 m/s. The rapid attenuation inland
of the tsunami flow depth is consistent with the event being partially generated by landslides caused by the Palu-
Donggala earthquake. A study of Dutch colonial archives and historical data reveals at least six tsunami events
have occurred in or near Palu Bay since 1920, suggesting a very short return period for such events, and a
significant tsunami hazard to the area.
the importance of social capital for migrants trying to build community cohesion and integrate into different cultural contexts. However, it is likely that most relocation because of environment stress will occur at sub-national to very local geographic scales, similar to what happens after
large-scale disasters, meaning that persons might be resettled within familiar cultural, linguistic, and religious contexts. In this paper we use qualitative data collected in 12 resettlement complexes built in Aceh, Indonesia for persons displaced by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami to analyze the importance of social capital for building cohesion within resettlement complexes and between resettlement complexes and host communities. We find that even though tsunami-affected persons were generally relocated less than 20 km from their pre-tsunami homes, there were clear social distinctions between resettled persons and host communities, which had practical impacts on integration, access to resources, and participation within local governance structures. We found shared cultural and religious traditions and social practices served as important sources of bonding capital within resettlement complexes. However, the same attributes were less effective as bridging capital between resettlement complexes and their host communities. These findings show that governments and NGOs need to be cautious about underestimating the negative social disruptions caused by short-distance relocation and the importance of bonding social capital for
fostering stable and sustainable resettlement communities.
initiative to investigate aid governance, community-driven
reconstruction initiatives and the rebuilding of historic
urban settlements damaged by the 2015 earthquakes
in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. This research was
motivated by the lack of reconstruction progress in urban
settlements one year after the earthquakes, and was
carried out in conjunction with the Housing Recovery and
Reconstruction Platform–Nepal and the Earth Observatory
of Singapore. We conducted ethnographic fieldwork in
five urban settlements over a period of 18 months. Our
research shows that the delay in urban reconstruction was
a function of the lack of a clear and well-supported policy
for urban reconstruction; limited governance capacity and
neglect of municipal- and ward-level officials; financial
restrictions caused by the funding cap per family to rebuild
their homes; and the lack of a framework to support local
community-driven rebuilding initiatives.
determinants of future societal vulnerability and thus the sustainability of development. The humanitarian sector
tends to favour rebuilding in-place to avoid the social disruptions of mass relocation, yet evidence on what affected people
want is mixed. Using the case of post-tsunami Banda Aceh, Indonesia, we investigate whether a policy to rebuild in-place in
the disaster-affected area suits an urban population that was previously unaware of the hazard. We show that following the
tsunami, a substantial proportion of the population prefers to live farther from the coast. This has caused a new price premium
for inland properties and socio-economic sorting of poorer households into coastal areas. These findings show that offering
reconstruction aid predominantly within a hazard-exposed area can inadvertently transfer disaster risk to the poor.
on the northern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, that dates to the
15th century. These grave markers, locally known as plang-pleng,
provide evidence for the formation and disappearance of an early
form of vernacular Muslim material culture in Southeast Asia. We
documented over 200 of these gravestones during a large-scale
archaeological landscape survey. In this article, we present a
typology of these gravestones based upon shape, morphology
and ornamentation. We then discuss their geographical
distribution and periodisation based on examples with dated
Arabic inscriptions. Our results show that these gravestones were
initially a cultural product of the historic trading settlement of
Lamri dating from the early 15th century. By the middle of the
15th century, variations of these stones started to appear widely
near the Aceh river. The plang-pleng tradition was displaced in
the early 16th century by the batu Aceh gravestones associated
with the Aceh sultanate, which became a standardised part of
Muslim material culture in the region for the next two centuries.
investigation of settlement and land use history in the desertic Wadi Faynan, from the beginning of the Holocene to the present day, as a contribution to understanding processes of desertification and environmental degradation in arid lands. The wadi is now used only by pastoralists on a seasonal basis, but its
rich archaeological record indicates that the locality has also been the focus at different times in the past not just for pastoralism but also for sedentary settlement, intensive floodwater farming, and copper and lead extraction and processing on a major scale. The
paper focuses on the Nabataean and Roman/Byzantine
periods (ca. 300 B.C.–A.D. 700), to illustrate how an integrated program of landscape archaeology and environmental science is defining changing patterns of arable, pastoral, and industrial activity in classical antiquity, and how Roman imperialism transformed the landscape, with effects that still impact on the lives of the present-day Bedouin pastoralists.
Niah Cave in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, famous for the discovery in 1958 in the West Mouth of the Great Cave of a modern human skull, the ‘Deep Skull,’ controversially associated with radiocarbon dates of ca. 40,000 years before the present. A new chronostratigraphy has been developed through a re-investigation of the lithostratigraphy left by the earlier excavations, AMS-dating using three different comparative pretreatments including ABOX of charcoal, and U-series using the Diffusion-Absorption model applied to fragments of bones from the Deep Skull itself. Stratigraphic reasons for earlier uncertainties about the antiquity of the skull are examined, and it is shown not to be an ‘intrusive’ artifact.
It was probably excavated from fluvial-pond-desiccation deposits that accumulated episodically in a shallow basin immediately behind the cave entrance lip, in a climate that ranged from times of comparative aridity with complete desiccation, to episodes of greater surface wetness, changes attributed to regional climatic fluctuations. Vegetation outside the cave varied significantly over time, including wet lowland forest, montane forest, savannah, and grassland. The new dates and the lithostratigraphy relate the Deep Skull to evidence of episodes of human activity that range in date from ca. 46,000 to ca. 34,000 years ago. Initial investigations of sediment scorching, pollen, palynomorphs, phytoliths, plant
macrofossils, and starch grains recovered from existing exposures, and of vertebrates from the current and the earlier excavations, suggest that
human foraging during these times was marked by habitat-tailored hunting technologies, the collection and processing of toxic plants for
consumption, and, perhaps, the use of fire at some forest-edges. The Niah evidence demonstrates the sophisticated nature of the subsistence
behavior developed by modern humans to exploit the tropical environments that they encountered in Southeast Asia, including rainforest.
Longitudinal studies from more than two decades of major disasters allow the reader to see how accumulated experiences of reconstruction influence the shape of projects responding to subsequent events
Draws on contributions from academics and humanitarian practitioners with years of on-the-ground experience
Discusses new forms of humanitarianism and their intersection with development projects emerging in contemporary Asia
Provides long-term analyses of post-disaster transformations, including the consequences of massive physical rebuilding, social restructuring and economic development
Throughout Asia rapid economic and social change means the region’s heritage is at once under threat and undergoing a revival as never before. As societies look forward, competing forces ensure they re-visit the past and the inherited, with the conservation of nature and culture now driven by the broader agendas of identity politics, tradition, revival, rapid development, environmentalism and sustainability. In response to these new and important trends, the twenty three accessible chapters here go beyond sector specific analyses to examine heritage in inter-disciplinary and critically engaged terms, encompassing the natural and the cultural, the tangible and intangible. Emerging environmentalisms, urban planning, identity politics, conflict memorialization, tourism and biodiversity are among the topics covered here.
This path-breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars working in the fields of heritage, tourism, archaeology, Asian studies, geography, anthropology, development, sociology, and cultural and postcolonial studies.
tsunami | Sumatra | Aceh | postdisaster recovery | hazards