Menstruation as a Weapon of War – The Politics of the Bleeding Body for Women on Political Protest at Armagh Prison Northern Ireland.

This article draws on the voices of women political prisoners who were detained at Armagh Prison during the period of the Troubles or the Conflict in Northern Ireland. It focuses on women who undertook an extraordinary form of protest against the prison authorities during the 1980s, known as the No Wash Protest. As the prisoners were prevented from leaving their cells by prison officer either to wash or to use the toilet, the women, living in the midst of their own dirt and body waste, added menstrual blood as a form of protest

Heritage in trust: sustainable stewardship in transition?

Founded in 1895 as a society for the preservation of natural beauty and historic interest, the National Trust starts its second century as Britain's largest private landowner. Its portfolio of property - natural and built, rural and urban, ancient and modern - is unique in its variety and quality. With its membership of over 2 million the Trust is also the world's largest voluntary conservation organisation. Frequently identified with 'establishment' values (though on occasion seen as subversive of them) the Trust has as often been a focus of critique as of celebration. This paper examines the Trust's changing relation to contested values of heritage as manifest in its acquisitions and management policies, in its engagement with environmental and social issues and an emerging politicisation which transcends a narrow, purely property- based interpretation of its statutory purpose. Recent acquisitions challenge conventional perceptions of 'natural beauty' and 'historic interest'. Organisational greening has precipitated a review of the implications of stewardship 'in perpetuity'. Recognition of the needs of local communities and awareness of equal opportunities issues have prompted a reinterpretation of its founders' concerns with access and enjoyment 'for the nation'. The outcome is an inchoate shift in the emphasis in heritage management from the preservation of the status quo, to the management of change, not merely within the context of its own heritage portfolio but also of the environmental and social context within which it is managed and presented

Making a home: archaeologies of the medieval English village

This paper discusses how we might evaluate different narratives of the English landscape (Fig. 4.1). Although such archaeology is characteristically presented in an atheoretical and particularistic way, it is, of course, embedded in a discourse of Englishness; so British colonial archaeology on the one hand and the W. G. Hoskins and O. G. S. Crawford tradition of local empirical studies are both key discourses, even if they rarely cross-reference each other. I will therefore look at how recent postcolonial views of landscape might help us critically evaluate different traditions (including the tradition of local empirical studies) with respect to a particular archaeological problem — the creation of the medieval English villag