Heritage under Siege, winner of the Blue Shield Award 2012, is the result of international multidisciplinary research on the subject of military implementation of cultural property protection (CPP) in the event of conflict. The book considers the practical feasibility as well as ideal perspectives within the juridical boundaries of the 1954 Hague Convention. The situation of today's cultural property protection is discussed. New case studies further introduce and analyze the subject. The results of field research which made it possible to follow and test processes in conflict areas including training, education, international, interagency, and interdisciplinary cooperation are presented here. This book gives a useful overview of the playing field of CPP and its players, as well as contemporary CPP in the context of military tasks during peace keeping and asymmetric operations. It includes suggestions for future directions including possibilities to balance interests and research outcomes as well as military deliverables. A separate section deals with legal aspects.

This volume expands understandings of crafting practices, which in the past was the major relational interaction between the social agency of materials, technology, and people, in co-creating an emergent ever-changing world. The chapters discuss different ways that crafting in the present is useful in understanding crafting experiences and methods in the past, including experiments to reproduce ancient excavated objects, historical accounts of crafting methods and experiences, craft revivals, and teaching historical crafts at museums and schools. Crafting in the World is unique in the diversity of its theoretical and multidisciplinary approaches to researching crafting, not just as a set of techniques for producing functional objects, but as social practices and technical choices embodying cultural ideas, knowledge, and multiple interwoven social networks. Crafting expresses and constitutes mental schemas, identities, ideologies, and cultures. The multiple meanings and significances of crafting are explored from a great variety of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, archaeology, sociology, education, psychology, women's studies, and ethnic studies. This book provides a deep temporal range and a global geographical scope, with case studies ranging from Europe, Africa, and Asia to the Americas and a global internet website for selling home crafted items.

This handbook is unique in its consideration of social and cultural contributions to sustainable oceans management. It is also unique in its deconstruction of the hegemonic value attached to the oceans and in its analysis of discourses regarding what national governments in the Global South should prioritise in their oceans management strategy. Offering a historical perspective from the start, the handbook reflects on the confluence of (western) scientific discourse and colonialism, and the impact of this on indigenous conceptions of the oceans and on social identity. With regard to the latter, the authors are mindful of the nationalisation of island territories worldwide and the impact of this process on regional collaboration, cultural exchange and the valuation of the oceans. Focusing on global examples, the handbook offers a nuanced, region relevant, contemporary conceptualisation of blue heritage, discussing what will be required to achieve an inclusive oceans economy by 2063, the end goal date of the African Union's Agenda 2063. The analysis will be useful to established academics in the field of ocean studies, policymakers and practitioners engaged in research on the ocean economy, as well as graduate scholars in the ocean sciences.

This book discusses erotic and magical goddesses and heroines in several ancient cultures, from the Near East and Asia, and throughout ancient Europe; in prehistoric and early historic iconography, their magical qualities are often indicated by a magical dance or stance. It is a look at female display figures both cross-culturally and cross-temporally, through texts and iconography, beginning with figures depicted in very early Neolithic Anatolia, early and middle Neolithic southeast Europe--Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia--continuing through the late Neolithic in East Asia, and into early historic Greece, India, and Ireland, and elsewhere across the world. These very similar female figures were depicted in Anatolia, Europe, Southern Asia, and East Asia, in a broad chronological sweep, beginning with the pre-pottery Neolithic, ca. 9000 BCE, and existing from the beginning of the second millennium of this era up to the present era. This book demonstrates the extraordinary similarities, in a broad geographic range, of depictions and descriptions of magical female figures who give fertility and strength to the peoples of their cultures by means of their magical erotic powers. This book uniquely contains translations of texts which describe these ancient female figures, from a multitude of Indo-European, Near Eastern, and East Asian works, a feat only possible given the authors' formidable combined linguistic expertise in over thirty languages. The book contains many photographs of these geographically different, but functionally and artistically similar, female figures. Many current books (academic and otherwise) explore some of the female figures the authors discuss in their book, but such a wide-ranging cross-cultural and cross-temporal view of this genre of female figures has never been undertaken until now. The "sexual" display of these female figures reflects the huge numinosity of the prehistoric divine feminine, and of her magical genitalia. The functions of fertility and apotropaia, which count among the functions of the early historic display and dancing figures, grow out of this numinosity and reflect the belief in and honoring of the powers of the ancient divine feminine.

The SURCOUF submarine met disaster on the night of Feb. 18, 1942. As a result, 130 people died. At the time, it was the worst submarine disaster ever. But decades later, people continue to argue about what happened to the mammoth submarine, which belonged to the free French. Written by Capt. Julius Grigore Jr., the foremost expert on the disaster, this scholarly work examines details about how $245 million in gold may have played a role in the disaster; questions about a possible double agent who may have plotted to block the Panama Canal and blow up SURCOUF; events that led President Roosevelt to threaten to deploy a battleship against SURCOUF; roles that women played before and after the disaster. Learn the real story behind one of the most misunderstood submarine disasters in history. Written for history buffs, servicemen and servicewomen, and anyone interested in a good mystery, "The SURCOUF Conspiracy" examines one of the strangest submarine stories of all time.