Maritime archaeology and underwater cultural heritage management have become well established over the past twenty years or so in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in Australia. During that period Australian researchers and underwater cultural heritage managers have conducted a significant number of important maritime archaeological investigations and have developed innovative approaches to the discipline.

Subject areas discussed in this book include shipwrecks and abandoned vessels, underwater site formation processes, maritime infrastructure and industries such as whaling, submerged aircraft and Australian Indigenous sites underwater. The application of National and State legislation and management regimes to these underwater cultural heritage sites is also highlighted, together with the important role of avocational divers and training programs in raising the profile of underwater and maritime heritage sites.

The book includes a comprehensive bibliography of work conducted both in Australia and by Australian maritime archaeologists in the Asia-Pacific region. This book will be of interest to students and practitioners of maritime and historical archaeology and cultural heritage managers throughout the world as example of good practice and innovative approaches to maritime archaeology.

The establishment of a consumer society in Australia has not been a particularly well explored area of academic inquiry. My interests lie in the concepts and meanings that underlie the material world; ideas like, in the words of Madonna, "I am a material girl and I live in a material world" (terminology taken to be not gender specific), the classic graffiti paraphrasing of Descartes: I shop therefore I am or perhaps simply in the "world of goods" in the more academically respectable terms of Douglas and Isherwood (1979). This book arises out of my longstanding interest in the early colonial period in Australia. In part it represents an extension of the purely "historical" research conducted for my Master's thesis in the Department of History at the University of Sydney which explored aspects of the diet, health and lived experience of con victs and immigrants during their voyages to the Australian colonies within the timeframe 1837 to 1839 (Staniforth, 1993a). More importantly, it is the culmina tion of more than twenty-five years involvement in the excavation of shipwreck sites in Australia starting with James Matthews (1841) in 1974, through the test excavation of William Salthouse in 1982, continuing with my involvement between 1985 and 1994 in the excavation of Sydney Cove (1797) and most recently with shore-based whaling stations and whaling shipwreck sites. In this respect, this book may be seen as an example of what Ian Hodder (1986, p."

Subject areas discussed in this book include shipwrecks and abandoned vessels, underwater site formation processes, maritime infrastructure and industries such as whaling, submerged aircraft and Australian Indigenous sites underwater. The application of National and State legislation and management regimes to these underwater cultural heritage sites is also highlighted. The contributors of this piece have set the standard for the practice in Australia from which others can learn.

The establishment of a consumer society in Australia has not been a particularly well explored area of academic inquiry. My interests lie in the concepts and meanings that underlie the material world; ideas like, in the words of Madonna, "I am a material girl and I live in a material world" (terminology taken to be not gender specific), the classic graffiti paraphrasing of Descartes: I shop therefore I am or perhaps simply in the "world of goods" in the more academically respectable terms of Douglas and Isherwood (1979). This book arises out of my longstanding interest in the early colonial period in Australia. In part it represents an extension of the purely "historical" research conducted for my Master's thesis in the Department of History at the University of Sydney which explored aspects of the diet, health and lived experience of con victs and immigrants during their voyages to the Australian colonies within the timeframe 1837 to 1839 (Staniforth, 1993a). More importantly, it is the culmina tion of more than twenty-five years involvement in the excavation of shipwreck sites in Australia starting with James Matthews (1841) in 1974, through the test excavation of William Salthouse in 1982, continuing with my involvement between 1985 and 1994 in the excavation of Sydney Cove (1797) and most recently with shore-based whaling stations and whaling shipwreck sites. In this respect, this book may be seen as an example of what Ian Hodder (1986, p.