This special issue explores how and why conflicts arise in the development and practice of heritage tourism. From New York City's Ground Zero and the archaeological site of Chichén Itzá in Yucatan, Mexico, to an Underground Railroad site in Pennsylvania and a post-industrial Massachusetts town, the authors of these four articles are concerned with identifying the often overlapping interests of stakeholders in their attempts to gain access to and guide the development of heritage resources. This issue grows out of a 2003 symposium entitled 'Resolving Conflicts in Heritage Tourism: A Public Interest Anthropology Approach', at the 102nd annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, Illinois, organised by Dr Peggy Reeves Sanday, Noel Salazar, and Benjamin Porter of the University of Pennsylvania. The symposium encouraged scholars to consider heritage apart from official and 'top-down' definitions as well as how an emerging methodological approach, public interest anthropology (PIA hereafter), 1 could be applied to the analysis of heritage conflicts.This introduction places the issue's key themes of heritage, tourism, conflict, and the public interest in focus and illustrates their intersection in a brief case study from modern Jordan. Following this, the four ensuing articles are discussed with an emphasis on their contributions to the issue's themes. Heritage and heritage tourism are longfamiliar terms to this journal's readership and our goal here is not to recapitulate what others have described so well elsewhere. 2 In particular, we analyse a process of revaluation that objects, sites, and practices undergo before they are placed within the domain of heritage. Additionally, we explain why tourism is an ideal realm in which to investigate heritage and why the conflicts that erupt around heritage tourism are particularly volatile.

We use faunal evidence from Khirbat al-Mudayna al-ʿAliya, an agropastoral settlement located in west-central Jordan, to examine early Iron Age subsistence regimes. Analysis of faunal evidence reveals a low-intensity, nonspecialized animal economy dependent on both domesticated and wild species, including freshwater crabs. The subsistence economy of the settlement, we argue, was structured so as to take maximum advantage of its location overlooking the Wadi al-Nukhayla, a perennial water source supporting a relatively verdant floral and faunal array. This diverse and flexible organization made subsistence in this resource-scarce environment more sustainable. When this profile is compared with other early Iron Age southern Levantine communities, the diversity of ways that animal economies were organized during this period is apparent, signaling the need to investigate the local strategies that communities used to adapt to their immediate environmental circumstances, not only ecologically but also socially.

Previous studies have shown that teachers may use messages that focus on the importance of avoiding failure (fear appeals) prior to high-stakes examinations as a motivational tactic. The aim of this study was to examine whether fear appeals, and their appraisal as challenging or threatening, impacted on student engagement. Data were collected from 1373 students, clustered in 46 classes, and 81 teachers responsible for instruction in those classes, prior to a high-stakes mathematics secondary school exit examination. Data were analyzed in a multilevel structural equation model. The appraisal of fear appeals as challenging lead to greater student engagement and as threatening to lower student engagement. The impact of fear appeals on engagement was mediated by a threat appraisal. The effectiveness of fear appeals as a motivational strategy depends on how they are interpreted by students.

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Prior to high-stakes examinations teachers use messages that focus on the importance of avoiding failure (fear appeals). This study examined whether teacher use of fear appeals was related to their perceptions of student engagement, followed by students' interpretation of fear appeals, and how they related to student-reported engagement. Teachers used more frequent fear appeals when they perceived student engagement to be low. More frequent fear appeals resulted in stronger challenge and threat appraisals. A challenge appraisal was associated with greater, and a threat appraisal with lower, behavioural and emotional engagement. Student appraisal seems to determine the effectiveness of these messages.