Biological diversity in wetlands; BiowetDokka Upper Secondary school has for several years used the local Dokka delta nature reserve for biology studies. The students are involved in practical scientific collection work, species identification and environmental monitoring. We use the open classroom and ´hands-on´ activities to increase motivation, stimulate environmental awareness and to learn about sustainable development. Our objective in this Erasmus+ project is to expand from the local to the international, through collaboration with Martin Mere Wetland Centre in England, Companhia das Lezírias in Portugal, Urdaibai in Spain and Wetland Link International (WLI, the global network of wetland centres). Our goal is to contribute to the mapping of biodiversity in wetland ecosystems, raise awareness amongst a broad group of stakeholders, and increase cooperation between wetland centres in various countries in an era of major global environmental challenges. By engaging students in international work we will contribute to sustainable development and to a better understanding of the impact of climate change on wetland biodiversity.The four wetland centers chosen for this project are all Ramsar sites and have local CEPA programs (communication, education and public awareness). We want our project to contribute to increased cooperation regarding the exchange of teaching methods. Our goal is that this project will help to emphasize the importance of biodiversity, and to further develop the use of on-site wetland education.We aim to combine theoretical skills in biology with practical fieldwork, in close collaboration with these wetland centers. Human development and climate change put increasing pressure on wetlands worldwide, and we want to facilitate a common monitoring system across national borders, which can be designed by the participants, ensuring its relevance and long term use as part of the WLI network.The students and teachers taking part will actively contribute, by designing and populating the biowet system. They will create materials and resources to share data and raise awareness, as well as use their skills to increase the reach of the wetland conservation message. This will culminate in our Biowet seminar in 2021. In addition, the staff involved in the project will come together to exchange experiences with fieldwork in lakes, rivers, mires and the Dokka delta.Our aim is that the project will help to emphasize the importance of biodiversity and increase European cooperation in wetland monitoring. The results will hopefully further develop the use of on-site wetland education.We believe that the digital monitoring system, Biowet for biodiversity in wetland ecosystems that we are designing with our staff and students specifically for the project, will be of interest in many other sites and countries in Europe. It will be openly available on the WLI website, and the members of the network will be encouraged to use it. It will form a systematic and tailor-made system for continual data sampling for different wetlands types. This will be easy to use for schools, volunteers and institutions, and will have an international relevance. It will build on existing data sets and engage new audiences. The EU Water Framework Directive is of direct relevance, and this project will actively broaden the audience, raise awareness of the issues facing wetlands, and make the link between climate change and its impact on wetlands.

The objective of this project, DOVTA, was to create freely accessible training materials, specifically videos, to teach archaeologists technical skills, to a common standard. In a modular format so that each could either be separated out and learnt individually, or combined into a longer, structured learning experience. A total of 96 videos were to be created covering 16 skills in six languages.The project exceeded this goal, producing 180 videos, covering 30 different skills, in six languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, and Polish). Released under an Open licence these materials can be adopted and adapted by anyone in the world for their learning needs. In addition, the scripts have been released so that anyone can create captions for the videos so they can be translated into any language.This project came about after labour market intelligence data showed skills gaps/shortages in some European countries and that is was difficult for archaeologists to move around Europe to work. As such, the materials were created so practitioners and aspirant practitioners can access VET that they and employers value, in order to enhance their potential to play active roles in the labour market. To further facilitate reaching this goal, the project partners were chosen from Spain, UK, Italy, Austria (German Language), Netherlands and Poland which labour market intelligence shows are the countries/language groups that have some of the largest European archaeological workforces. While it is too early to see the full impact of the materials, a project survey of potential users found that 78% of them would use all or some of the videos in their training. The project has facilitated the uptake of the Archaeological Skills Passport, a method for measuring skill competencies, in three of the partner countries. Finally, it also provided training to all the partners so they can each undertake filming in the future and create more teaching videos.

The transition from foraging to farming represents one of the most transcendental shifts in the history of humanity. Decades of research in southwest Asia have shown that this process culminated with the development of Neolithic agricultural systems c. 10 ka cal. BP. Yet, how it started, that is, how hunter-gatherers became, for the first time, engaged with the management of plants, continues to be largely undetermined. Palaeorigins aims to fill this major gap of knowledge. Benefiting from the exceptional Epipalaeolithic archaeobotanical materials that are now available (c. 23-11 ka cal. BP), it will ask: To what extent were Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers managing the land and the plant resources around them? Did climatic factors trigger plant resource intensification, or were cultural dynamics, like the need for specific foodstuffs, that first motivated plant-food production? To achieve such an ambitious aim PalaeOrigins will pioneer a holistic and high-resolution approach to study the plant-based subsistence. It will use a unique combination of traditional and most novel archaeobotanical materials, state-of-the-art stable isotope analyses, computational science, and theoretical models to: 1) Reconstruct the distribution and availability of plant resources during the environmental shifts of the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene; 2) Determine how plant procurement strategies, land uses and management activities articulated during the Epipalaeolithic period; and 3) Define hunter-gatherers' food culture, assessing their plant-food selection, processing and consumption practices. Taken together, PalaeOrigins will move beyond traditional Neolithic-centred paradigms to explain the origins of plant-food production. It will open up new research horizons, merging science and theory, to elucidate the nature of the human-environment interactions that paved the way to agriculture, and ultimately, changed the course of our history.

The problematic separation of nature and culture in Western ontologies has contributed to instrumental relationships to the natural and culture world alike. The nature-culture divide has narrowed the scope of landscapes to the technical management of either natural or cultural sites. Within heritage policy, this binary is reproduced in the separation of “natural” and “cultural” landscapes in national and international legal and administrative frameworks resulting in the problematic separation of natural and cultural resources in the practice of planning and development. More recent developments aim to broaden discussions of sustainability to encompass human and non-human actors and environments.As archaeological heritage comprises a distinct part of culture heritage and the nature is an intrinsic element of the past shared culture heritage conforming the local identity, the project intends to focus on the integration of both types of heritage. Accordingly, the preservation, management, and conservation of such integrated heritage is an indispensable element of international and national policies as well as every conservation activity. As these two types of heritage operate in two largely impenetrable organizational frameworks, common concerns of both cultural and natural heritage have hardly been systematically defined, not to mention transferred into coherent training materials directed to both sectors. Hence, the project objectives involve production of a range of innovative didactic materials aimed at integrating archaeological and natural heritage. Understanding the environmental impact of archaeological heritage and significance of natural heritage for regulations and practices in the domain of archaeological heritage is to be mainstreamed into education and vocational training systems. A need of developing and upgrading vocational skills in the sector of protection and management of archaeological and natural heritage is a must taking into account dynamic changes over the past couple of years in both fields in Europe. Doubtless to say, these are not sufficiently known among people professionally responsible for the protection and management of both archaeological and natural heritage across Europe. As both heritage domains need to be systematically integrated, the project intends to identify their nature along with its constituent elements. This will then be used for the production of training materials and methodology of content preparation and delivery to meet the needs of rapidly changing modes of protection and management of archaeological and natural heritage sectors in the Partners’ countries as well as a significance of this integrated heritage in spatial planning and regional development policies.The project is directly inter-sectoral in scope by providing didactic materials and training for archaeological and natural heritage professionals aimed at increasing synergy between these sectors. It will also foster the assessment of transversal skills and promote the take-up of practical entrepreneurial experiences in education and training. In order make the changing character of archaeological and natural heritage understood, the project intends to elaborate and prepare a range of didactic material aimed at address the most pertaining issues in the process of integration of natural and archaeological resources in the practice of their protection and management as well in the spatial planning and regional development. Finally, in order to make the delivery of this new content sustainable, the project intends to establish Centers of Integrated Heritage Teaching Excellence. They will provide an organizational structure to educational activities in the domain of integrated heritage. They shall be able to effectively use different methods of distance learning in the domain of the integrated heritage dedicated to different job markets. The Centers will run trainings of a group of ca. 100 people representing all target groups. The final outcome of the project comprises the production of innovative methodology of vocational training in the domain of integrated archaeological-natural heritage. The project shall also explicitly attempt to integrate an offer of the CIHTE with the VET systems in participating countries.The CIHTEs will be intrinsically integrated with the activities carried out by participating institutions. This will secure its existence beyond the project duration. By offering a coherent and significant didactic content that well meet the demands of the heritage policies in contemporary Europe, becoming a valuable asset to the training offers of these institutions. The stability of the project results are also secured by a well established Content Repository, of which local version will be made available in each participating country. These make it possible to maintain and use these produced training materials beyond the consortium forming the project.