Archaeology and post-conflict society in Northern Ireland

By way of illustration, I'll draw upon work in Northern Ireland. The archaeology I conduct in Northern Ireland specifically focuses upon early modern British expansion. I am interested in examining late medieval Irish life and the subsequent interactions between the Irish and the (mainly) English and Scots who settled in Ireland as part of the late 16th- and early 17th-century processes of plantation. I do so in full recognition that this period and these interactions remain contested and constitute the root of the dichotomous historical memories that gave rise to thirty years of violence during the Troubles (1968–98), and which continue to structure everyday life. Broadly drawn, contemporary Northern Irish society is dichotomous – divided between roughly equivalent populations that self-identify as either Catholic/nationalist, heir to the Gaels, or Protestant/unionist, heir to the English and Scots planters of the 17th century. Importantly, and despite the general equivalency of voices, both communities self-identify as minorities. The educational system continues to ensure divided identities, insofar as over 90 per cent of schoolchildren in Northern Ireland continue to be educated in either maintained majority-Catholic or controlled majority-Protestant schools (McCully and Barton Reference McCully and Barton2009; Hayes, McAllister and Dowds Reference Hayes, McAllister and Dowds2006).

While outbreaks of sectarian violence are increasingly confined to known flashpoints, one doesn't need to scratch far below the surface to find widespread evidence of unhealed wounds. A recent investigation into mental health in Northern Ireland discovered that fully 39 per cent of the adult population experienced a traumatic episode directly related to the conflict, which has resulted in higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered today than reported by comparable studies anywhere else in the world (Ferry et al. Reference Ferry, Bolton, Bunting, O'Neill, Murphy and Devine2011). But a weekend visitor to Belfast is unlikely to detect these scars. Since the signing of the St Andrews Agreement in 2006, a power-sharing government has been continuously in place, bolstered by the historical decision taken by the Protestant firebrand Reverend Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the former IRA commander Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin to stand alongside one another in government as first minister and deputy minister respectively. Physical traces of the conflict have been partially erased, marked by the decommissioning of British Army bases, the removal of checkpoints, the reopening of central Belfast streets to automobile traffic, and a softening of the once hard-line sectarian imagery on Belfast's legendary painted gables. Tourist numbers are up. The city, once served mainly by a network of small guest houses and the Europa hotel, once fondly known as the most bombed hotel in Western Europe, now boasts over a dozen high-occupancy hotels, from the cheapest Ibis to the five-star Fitzwilliam Hotel, to a boutique Malmaison housed within a former Victorian seed warehouse. To connect with the Belfast of old, many visitors thrill themselves with a bus or black taxi tour of Troubles hotspots, a voyeuristic journey through the back streets of North and West Belfast where over a thousand people lost their lives in sectarian violence (Sutton Reference Sutton2001). In cruising past the many ‘peace walls’ which continue to divide Belfast neighbourhoods, few visitors are likely to guess that the majority of those living in close proximity to the walls strongly advocate their retention and cannot envision a time when they will not be necessary. Across Northern Ireland, 88 peace lines separate communities, the majority of which were constructed after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 (Byrne, Heenan and Robinson Reference Byrne, Heenan and Robinson2012; McDonald Reference McDonald2009).

The incomplete nature of the Northern Ireland peace process was dramatically exposed to the world when sectarian conflict once again became headline news in December 2012 and January 2013, following a 3 December 2012 vote by the Belfast City Council in favour of only flying the Union flag on 15 designated days per year (McKeown Reference McKeown2012). The vote itself was a compromise between unionist politicians who wished the flag to fly 365 days per year, and nationalist politicians who wished to see it removed entirely. The road to peace has long been lined with such compromises, but for loyalists and many unionists this particular compromise served as a touchstone for underlying anxieties. In a depressingly familiar cycle, widespread street protests soon turned violent. Petrol bombs and water cannons exploded across streets, hundreds of protesters and police suffered injuries, and politicians and media figures were issued with death threats. At the time of final submission of this article (18 January) and in the absence of any acceptable political solution, the violence continues (Macauley Reference Macauley2013). Recent counterprotests led by the self-styled ‘silent majority’ reflect widespread fears about the damage being done to the recently rehabilitated image of Northern Ireland as a business- and tourist-friendly locale.

In this uneasy context of rapid redevelopment and financial investment in a land marred by unresolved sectarianism and personal trauma, what point is there in worrying about something as inconsequential as archaeology and the positionality of its practitioners? I would argue that, actually, archaeology can play and is playing a serious role in encouraging dialogue and promoting healing. Since directing my first Northern Irish excavation in the 1990s on an early 17th-century plantation-period site, I have believed that a better public understanding of the complexities of the early modern period in Ireland can provoke and enhance understanding between today's two traditions and contribute to the construction of some form of shared, peaceful future. Insights from research on late medieval and plantation-period sites highlight the complexity of cultural interactions in the period and reveal considerable and incontrovertible material evidence for the emergence of shared, syncretic practices drawing upon Irish, Scottish, and English traditions. Physical evidence for shared practice in the plantation period includes the presence of Irish vernacular buildings and ceramic vessels in English plantation villages (Horning Reference Horning, Duffy, Edwards and Fitzpatrick2001); the adoption and subversion of English polite architecture by the Gaelic elite (Donnelly Reference Donnelly2005); the mimicking of Gaelic hospitality rituals and use of associated material culture by the planter elite (Horning Reference Horning and Clack2013); the reuse of raths and crannogs by settlers (Brady and O'Conor Reference Brady and O'Conor2005); and continuity in pre-plantation settlement patterns and landscape use, accompanied by documentary analysis highlighting routine interaction between indigenous Irish and incoming settlers (Donnelly Reference Donnelly, Horning, O'Baoill, Donnelly and Logue2007; Donnelly and Horning Reference Donnelly and Horning2002). In the present, such tangible evidence possesses a profound capacity to challenge understandings of the divide between Irish and British identities and contribute to the emergence of a shared Northern Irish identity. That said, it is only through the peace process that a space has been created to openly research the period and to consider the ramifications of such evidence (see Horning Reference Horning2006 for an earlier discussion).

Despite my commitment to the potential of archaeology to make a serious contribution to reconciliation and the normalization of society, I long questioned my right to comment at all. What authority do I have to speak about the present and prognosticate for the future? Is it not both arrogant and presumptuous to set myself up as someone capable of contributing in any meaningful way to the project of peace? I received a powerful answer to these questions in 2009. Following a public tour I co-led of plantation-period sites that highlighted shared material culture, the emergence of hybrid architectural forms, and even the involvement of Catholic Scots as planters, anonymous feedback was solicited from the participants. The answers were surprisingly direct. One respondent suggested that ‘similar tours in future for local people will be useful in promoting better society as a whole’, while another stated ‘how by involving archaeologists they can exert such influence’ (Causeway Museum Service 2009). There is considerable advantage to being perceived as something of a neutral authority, even if as a self-reflexive archaeologist I can't afford to believe in objectivity. In societies in conflict, the perceived neutrality of an archaeologist provides a mechanism for overcoming community division.

While the Northern Ireland population is becoming increasingly diverse through post-Troubles in-migration, the divide between the two communities runs very deep. With or without peace lines, Northern Ireland remains a segregated society. The same study that revealed the reluctance of interface communities to demolish the peace walls also noted that 78 per cent of those polled believed that segregation was the norm, a perception readily borne out by social geography (Byrne, Heenan and Robinson 2012). As the first post-Troubles generation comes of age, how different is their understanding of Northern Irish society from that of their parents? Residential and educational segregation continues to shape people's understanding of their worlds. In the political sphere, the Northern Ireland Assembly is dominated by two parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin, from opposite poles, while the other parties jockey for position in an uncertain middle ground. The political divide reflects the social divide. The uncomfortable reality is that the most significant impediment to the emergence of any sense of shared identity and common heritage is the structure of the peace process itself. Of necessity, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was founded upon the reification of the two-traditions dichotomy in order to assure parity and equality. In post-Troubles Northern Ireland, everything has to be divided evenly and balanced across both communities. Peace itself is built on maintaining difference, not on overcoming or blending or obscuring difference.

Constructing difference? Ulster Scots heritage

To illustrate how this plays out in terms of archaeology, consider the phenomenon of Ulster Scots heritage. Within the Protestant community, some of the most influential voices are those of individuals whose ancestors came to Ulster from lowland Scotland, many of them professing Nonconformist faiths dominated by variants of Presbyterianism. Their understanding of the plantation period is one in which their ancestors came to a wasted, depopulated land – a terra nullius – and then transformed it into an agricultural and, later, industrial powerhouse. While the majority of Presbyterian Scots actually came to Ulster in the late 17th century, in memory it is the early 17th-century plantation period that resonates. Over the last decade, we have witnessed the conscious refinement of an Ulster Scots identity, complete with the codification of an Ulster Scots language. According to one critic, the new emphasis on the language, arts and historical accomplishments of (Protestant) Ulster Scots was a direct response to the superior abilities of the nationalist community to unite behind and promote a coherent sense of Irish culture and identity: ‘by the mid-1990s Protestant urban communities found themselves nearly a generation behind in the business of grassroots cultural politics’ (Dowling Reference Dowling2007, 53). The Ulster Scots Language Society answered the call. As part of the provisions of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure began to provide funding to the Ulster Scots Agency, or Boord O Ulstèr Scotch, to promote Ulster Scots language and heritage, in parity with support for the Irish-language body, Foras na Gaeilge.

The identity of Ulster Scots as a language rather than a dialect remains a subject of politically tinged debate, as exemplified in the comments of the Irish Times journalist Frank McNally (Reference McNally2012):

Whether or not the use of the backward-slanting accent in Ulster Scots was designed in opposition to the forward-slanting one employed in modern Irish, it does seem important to note that most Ulster Scots speakers did not know that they were speaking a different language from English until they were informed that this was the case, and that they were special, or at least as special as their Irish-speaking counterparts. What we are seeing is enhancement of difference, funded by the peace process. In short, the emphasis upon parity between the two communities has facilitated the enhancement of difference through celebrating different cultural traditions, rather than facilitating and promoting elements of shared cultural heritage. That the new construction of Ulster Protestant identity as a uniquely Scottish inheritance ignores the considerable English impact on Ulster society remains an unresolved issue. To date, no significant backlash has occurred, perhaps in acknowledgement that in a dichotomous society what matters most is support for a Protestant identity, full stop.

Inevitably, an archaeological landscape that materially attests to the processes of plantation and displacement would figure in these new constructions of difference, and that is clearly the case for the Ulster Scots. Recognizing the significance of the built fabric to constructions of identity, and cognizant of a number of plantation anniversaries this decade, in very late 2011 the Ulster Scots Academy (separate from the agency, the academy is a government-funded body tasked with research and development in support of the broader Ulster Scots agenda) put a project out to tender that involved surveying and investigating archaeological sites associated with Ulster Scots plantation settlement. Illustrating the charged nature of this project, the company that submitted the lowest price and won the bid, a United States-based multinational, has now forbidden its staff (albeit not its partners) to discuss the project with the media or with the public. In so doing, they may have avoided any negative publicity in the context of Irish America, where a Catholic voice predominates, but they have thrown away a significant opportunity in Northern Ireland to complicate understandings of cultural relations between the Scots, Irish and English in the early modern period. What we already know about the archaeology of lowland Scottish settlement in the north of Ireland sets up a considerable challenge to notions of Ulster as a depopulated wasteland or of the Scots as necessarily uncompromising in their attitude to the Irish. Work by John O'Keeffe (Reference O'Keeffe2008) on the Ards Peninsula has clearly demonstrated how the 1606 settlement of lowland Scots under the aegis of William Montgomery and James Hamilton made considerable use of the existent Gaelic pattern of landholding, transport, communication and even housing. The Gaelic Irish were not banished from the region, but continued to live in the Ards and contribute to the evolution of post-medieval society. As such, investigating the character of their relations with the incoming Scots could have considerable value in the present in terms of challenging the construction of difference. But somebody has to be willing to put their head above the parapet.

Whatever results from the excavations, the Ulster Scots Agency will prioritize what they see as the recognizably Ulster Scots element as they employ the research to promote Ulster Scots heritage. Whatever the personal beliefs of employees of the Agency (and some prominent members are very active in cross-community engagement), they have a job to do. As a government agency, they have to demonstrate that they are spending their monies in support of their defined function and remit. While the funding streams remain based upon a notion of parity between the two traditions, the incentive is to continue to promote and construct an arguably exclusive identity. But there is another challenge ahead. What happens to Northern Ireland's unionist Ulster Scots if Scotland itself votes for independence? Orange Order leader David Hume has called for Northern Ireland's Ulster Scots, as ‘stakeholders’, to be given a vote in the upcoming Scottish referendum (Hennessy Reference Hennessy2012), while DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has urged a full campaign against Scottish independence (Moriarty Reference Moriarty2012).

Running from the past

What about government institutions which are meant to present the heritage of all communities? The Ulster Museum, reopened in 2010 after a multi-year refurbishment, has unfortunately not shown much nerve in dealing with the Troubles and their roots. The current Troubles exhibit, From Plantation to Power-Sharing, is relegated to a dark corner of the museum, perhaps in the hope that visitors might overlook its existence. The exhibit consists of a jumble of mini plywood house gables. The exhibit text itself is basic and event-centred: in effect, Wikipedia does the Troubles. Accompanying the sparse texts are black-and-white videos stringing together footage from the period, albeit in no particular order. Chronology is confused, with no effort to consider the causes of the Troubles, despite the fact that the exhibit title firmly roots the problems in the events of the 17th century. The richly symbolic material culture of the Troubles is nowhere to be seen, while the greyscale colour scheme suggests that the history of the Troubles can be understood as black-and-white; in effect denying the lived experiences of Northern Irish visitors by draining the colour of blood from their memories. An apologetic statement opens the exhibit: ‘The gallery is arranged around particular events and themes. Some of them may be upsetting – most remain contentious. We acknowledge the sensitivity and deeply held views about the issues reflected here . . . We welcome feedback.’ Feedback has been scathing and focused upon the museum's lack of courage (e.g. Gray Reference Gray2010).

This lack of nerve to engage directly with contested histories may go some way to explain the somewhat perverse lure of the Titanic story as a central element of Belfast's heritage tourism. Uniting behind the slogan ‘she was alright when she left here’, Belfast can celebrate its role in the design and construction of the ocean liner, a story told in the brand new multi-million-pound Titanic Belfast, a signature building situated in the historic docks area. Even this isn't straightforward. Just outside Titanic Belfast survive the Harland and Wolff drawing offices where the Titanic and hundreds of other ships were designed. Around the corner the 1910 ship the Nomadic, the last surviving White Star Line vessel, is berthed. Much of the built fabric of the dockyards, where generations of Belfast families spent their working lives, survives, as do some of their homes in the narrow terraced streets of adjacent Sailortown and East and North Belfast. But these physical survivals are not linked to the Titanic story either in the exhibits or in the reconfigured tourist landscape. The drawing offices sit vacant and decaying (figure 1), awaiting the next injection of cash to facilitate plans to convert the building not into a heritage or educational centre, but a luxury hotel. Sailortown's historic 19th-century Rotterdam Bar, a centre of Belfast's music scene throughout the Troubles, lies empty and shuttered, under threat of demolition and marooned within a redeveloped commercial landscape (‘Belfast's Rotterdam’ 2011) (figure 2).

Figure 1

Derelict Harland and Wolff drawing offices (left) adjacent to the new Titanic Belfast building (right). Photo by author.

Figure 2

Sailortown's Rotterdam Bar. Photo by author.

Whose fault is it that these structures and landscapes play no part in presenting the Titanic story? Well, the fault can probably be shared around, but without a strong archaeological voice explaining the significance of what may seem to be unprepossessing, dilapidated buildings and docks, few are likely to care because they don't know what is left to care about. While in this regard Belfast may be little different to other post-industrial cities struggling with redevelopment, it is the relationship of sectarianism in the maritime history of Belfast that lends particular relevance to addressing the significance of its built heritage. During the heyday of the Belfast shipbuilding industry, the skilled jobs were overwhelmingly dominated by Protestant workers. Discriminatory labour practices gave rise to sectarian riots in the shipyards, including an outbreak in 1912, the year Titanic was launched (Connolly and Mackintosh Reference Connolly2012; O'Connell Reference O'Connell and Connolly2012). If public interpretation remains focused entirely upon the Titanic as a marvel of engineering without addressing the concomitant struggles and conflict associated with its construction by a segregated workforce, few locally are likely to care in the long term.

Charting the future?

Addressing the city's industrial heritage is now emerging as one of several elements in the new Belfast City Council (2012) cultural framework plan, which will structure future expenditure and programmes in relation to grants and projects and has been drawn up through consultation with members of the public as well as professionals. The document itself, which is subject to the approval of the elected city councillors, only tentatively and obliquely references the value of heritage in post-conflict Northern Ireland: ‘People who are knowledgeable about their heritage, history and traditions are connected to the places in which they live and work and feel more comfortable with themselves and with others, even when they identify difference.’ Another key element over the next year will be dealing with one more of a series of contentious anniversaries. In 1613, Belfast received its crown-sanctioned city charter. Activities commemorating the charter will need to steer a careful course that acknowledges the development of Belfast as a plantation town but also addresses the pre-plantation history of the settlement as well as the reality that plantation-era Belfast was never an exclusively Protestant domain (Ó Baoill Reference Ó Baoill2011, Connolly Reference Connolly, Mackintosh and Connolly2012).

The 1613 town charter anniversaries are shared by Ulster's other plantation towns, and local authorities have chosen to deal with the issue of commemorating their plantation past in varying fashions. The walled city of Derry/Londonderry built its successful bid to be the UK City of Culture on the back of its 1613 town charter anniversary and its efforts at developing a peaceful future. Yet official plans for the City of Culture are resolutely arts-driven, not heritage-driven, reflecting anxiety over addressing the unhealed wounds that precipitated the detonation of two incendiary devices outside the City of Culture offices (‘Derry bomb attack linked to award’ 2011). Rhetoric surrounding the surviving early 17th-century city walls, built to defend the English settlement, focuses on ‘neutralizing’ or ‘decommissioning’ the walls in the present, not on taking a critical look at their past. The aim is looking forward and not backward. Acts of forgetting can have value in conflict resolution, but the walls themselves remain and have stories to tell.

Elsewhere, the peace dividend has brought an increased willingness on the part of some public authorities to begin to engage with the relationship between the past and present. Subsequent to the 2009 plantation tours referenced above, European Union Peace III monies were acquired by a local authority, the Causeway Museums Service within Coleraine Borough Council, to repeat and expand on the archaeological tours, and to involve local communities in excavations of plantation-period sites. Feedback has continued to be surprising, and encouraging: ‘So much has been blown out of the water. Stories and myths that we accepted as truth. Stories we grew up with’ (Northern Ireland Community Archive 2012). Other projects challenging accepted narratives and consciously bringing together groups from across the sectarian divide include multi-year excavations at Dunluce Castle on the north Antrim coast, a late medieval castle once occupied by the Catholic Highlander Randall McDonnell. Illustrating the complexity of the past is the fact that McDonnell himself was actually a keen proponent of the plantation process which brought Protestant settlers and rule in the early 17th century (Breen Reference Breen2012). In another example, a community excavation at the site of a Gaelic stronghold and late 16th-century English garrison at Dunnalong, Co. Tyrone, reached not only across the two communities in Ulster, but also across the border into Co. Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. A collaborative project has also reached beyond Northern Ireland, engaging communities in Ulster with those in the Scottish Isles, reconnecting people with their shared medieval heritage.

Returning to Belfast, another cross-community project is exploring the archaeology of the hills that surround the city. Once a no-go area during the Troubles, the Belfast Hills are now recognized as a significant natural and cultural heritage asset for the half-million residents of the greater Belfast area. Investigating the archaeological resources in the hills provides a neutral space for communities to come together. Another project currently under development is the excavation of an enigmatic fortification that is situated near an interface zone in the city. The site may be a late 16th-century English campaign fort, or related to the 1641 Irish Rising/Rebellion, or the 1680s Williamite War. Either way, it will have stories to tell about conflict in the history of early modern Ireland. Involving the unemployed youth of the local communities from across the interface in the excavation is a key element (and challenge) of the plan. Directly dealing with the role of the site in past conflict in engaging with individuals whose own lives have been affected by violence seems to me to be a fundamentally more honest and productive means of engagement than avoiding the issue or whitewashing the past. All of these projects are as much about overcoming social and sectarian division in the present as they are rooted in exploring and sharing the archaeological stories. Some archaeologists may find that balance unacceptable; I do not.

Finding our voice

I have often been asked by colleagues why I chose to focus on plantation-period archaeology in Northern Ireland, given how much easier it might be to focus on more archaeologically respected periods or, better yet, go somewhere else warm and sunny and, by virtue of being at a distance, conduct research considered by my institution as being of greater international significance. In response, I usually say that far from finding it difficult, I find it very easy. People care about the past in Northern Ireland, even if the past continues to be contested – indeed, because the past continues to be contested. There is an appetite to understand. When histories are all agreed, they cease to be a point of conversation. But we don't need conflict to make a difference. We just need to recognize that, like it or not, our identity as archaeologists, as professionals with insight into the past, puts us into a position where we can ‘exert influence’. Deciding when, why and how we choose to do that is the hard part.

In their introduction to this discussion, Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz ask whether or not ‘our expertise in thinking and articulating ideas give[s] us authority in public life’. For me the answer is yes. I believe we have a responsibility to recognize our ability to exert influence, and a responsibility to act as responsible members of our own societies. Sometimes that may mean remaining quiet, but other times it means acknowledging our authority and standing up as a public intellectual. One doesn't have to be charismatic or French or male to be a public intellectual. And a public intellectual doesn't have to be a celebrity, or even widely recognized. A public intellectual is one who is not afraid to step outside professional circles and comfort zones and engage and challenge and comment on issues of broad relevancy in the present. And, like it or not, the past is very relevant in the present and as archaeologists we happen to know a lot about the past. And quite a lot about how it has been, is being and can be misused for political purposes. Surely that has a social value.