A child's face amid 10,000 years of Irish at war
By David McKittrick, Ireland Correspondent
12 December 2003


The fresh, open face of six-year-old David Hanna gazes up from the school
yearbook in the glass case, alongside his poem about his teddy bear,
Thumper.

David is in a museum now, 15 years after being blown up with his mother and
father by the IRA. He is part of history, one of many poignant components
at the Irish at War exhibition at Belfast's Ulster Museum.

Just around the corner from David's exhibit is another earlier victim of
violence in Ireland, a skeleton. One of his vertebrae bears the mark of the
spear thrust that pierced his body, beside a spear head of the sort that
killed him. He dates from the middle of the Bronze Age, around 1500 BC, but
even older victims are here. In the very first case sits what the staff
call a "Mesolithic baseball bat" which was wielded thousands of years
earlier.

The exhibition covers 10,000 years from the Stone Age until 1 November,
2003. Its final entry records the funeral of Jean McConville, who was
missing for decades and who was buried last month.

A section on closure quotes an 18th-century Russian general who once
remarked that no war was over until the last body was returned. It goes on:
"The burial places of many civilian and military victims from 1919 to 1921,
and of at least 10 victims of the recent troubles, are still unaccounted
for. All societies value the rituals of funeral and burial in expressing
grief and pride in the dead."

The carefully neutral tone of the commentary is important because of the
extreme sensitivities involved. The exhibition deals with events which are
the stuff of history, and of day-to-day life in Belfast.

Richard Warner, the head of archaeology at the museum, said: "We knew
dealing with the troubles was going to be difficult.

rest at

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/ulster/story.jsp?story=472458

Mark Hall
markhall@...