Category: Historical Sites

Why Aotearoa New Zealand’s early Polynesian settlement should be recognised with World Heritage Site status

Reading time: 5 minutes
Despite Aotearoa New Zealand’s rich and celebrated natural and cultural wonders, we have contributed only three to the international list: Te Wahipounamu in the South Island, Tongariro National Park in the North Island, and New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands.

While there is a good tentative list of potential submissions, we believe it is now out of date and the country needs to go further. Mostly, we need to be thinking in much broader terms about the reasons we value our heritage.

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What we’re finding as we excavate Halmyris, a frontier fort of the Roman Empire

Reading time: 5 minutes
Nationalism is resurging across Europe, and with it has come increasing attention on the vulnerable outer edges of nations: borders, frontiers, and other marginal zones. Today, some of the frontiers of the Roman Empire are now national boundaries, but in antiquity these spaces functioned very differently from how we understand borders today.

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Left to ruin: we must preserve our forgotten wartime defences

Reading time: 5 minutes
Australia built a number of coastal defences to help protect the country from any enemy attack during the second world war. Now, almost 80 years later, some of the physical remnants of those historic facilities lie forgotten and decaying.

These monuments to the nation’s home defence are in desperate need of preservation. While their condition varies greatly, too many have faded into obscurity.

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Oradour-sur-Glane, a town whose people were massacred by the SS Panzer Division Das Reich

Oradour Sur Glane was once a thriving village community in West-Central France. Vibrant coffee shops and restaurants lined the streets, and a tram connected the 648 residents to the nearby city of Limoges. Everything changed on 10th June 1944, when the SS Panzer Division Das Reich massacred the men, women, and children. Only six people survived. The SS soldiers herded Oradour’s men into barns and outbuildings, and locked the women and children inside the village church.

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Battle of One Tree Hill, Australian Frontier Wars

Reading time: 7 minutes
The Battle of One Tree Hill in 1843 was one of the largest battles in the Australian frontier wars, taking place at what is now known as Tabletop Mountain, Toowoomba, QLD. A confederation of Aboriginal nations lead by Jagera man Multuggerah overwhelmed a group of armed European settlers who were attempting to occupy the Darling Downs and Lockyer Valley. This group of Aboriginal nations was known as the mountain tribes alliance and brought together several groups who hadn’t traditionally been aligned with each other.

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