Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the secure button at the right. If you think it is interesting or useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. To help keep the site in operation, please use the amazon search portal at the right - each purchase earns a small amount of advertising revenue **] Even if you’ve never been to Northern Ireland , you probably know about our murals. Certainly, no visit to Belfast appears to be complete without a trip on one of the number of ‘troubles tours’ busses to some of the less than salubrious quarters of the city in search of this form of painted gable sectarianism. Much has been written about their origins, meaning, symbolism, and all that and, should the mood take you, you can read about it in the Wiki article: here . The Wiki article gives some examples of the genre, as does the rather good Belfast Murals site: here . However you look at it, the murals break down into two main groups:...

Surprisingly, this is not the work of a member of the People's Front of Judea . It was carried out as part of a series of racist attacks on  Romanian families last night (28th July 2014) in East Belfast – not far from my house. It’s dispiriting enough that we live in a society where such attacks are becoming relatively commonplace, but even more so when the perpetrators lack the basic education to even spell the name of the country they hate - much less realise that at least one of the families they terrorised was actually Slovakian ! My apologies, as this has precious little to do with the usual themes of this blog, beyond tickling my rather dark sense of archaeology-related humour. However, sometimes you have to take a stand and say – I do not support this, it is not done in my name: it is despicable and it is disgusting. Shame on those who carry out such attacks and shame on those who support them. Not that there's much that can be described as a ‘bright side’...