Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 131, Issue 1, 2018

Abstract In small scratches forgotten: New perspectives on graffiti from ancient Dura-Europos We need to rethink graffiti: they are not just words and images but places and things. Using the graffiti of Dura-Europos on the Syrian Euphrates, this paper discusses some of the ways that the unofficial urban texts of antiquity can, when studied in their spatial context as material objects, reveal urban histories which rub against Read More

Abstract ‘Brutus, are you sleeping?’ Political graffiti in Rome and Pompeii This paper discusses the discrepancy between the literary sources that describe how in Rome graffiti criticized men of power and voiced political dissent, and the virtual lack of such surviving graffiti in smaller Roman towns, primarily Pompeii. Who wrote political graffiti and for what public? And how can we explain the ubiquity of political graffiti in Rom Read More

Abstract Graffiti in medieval and early modern religious spaces: illicit or accepted practice? The case of the sacro monte at Varallo Leaving one’s personal mark at a site of cult is an age-old practice attested in several religions, including Christianity from its earliest phases onwards. This article asks to what degree scratching graffiti into church walls was accepted behaviour in Western Europe during the medieval and early mod Read More

Abstract Graffiti in Venice. Texts, drawings, and posters in an early modern Italian city This article examines how and why Venetians wrote on walls in the early modern period. From the Piazza San Marco area – the city’s political and religious heart – to the peripheral quarantine island and the ducal prisons, it analyses the locations and meaning of official and subversive writing practices, using archival, archaeological, and visual Read More

Abstract The epigraphic downfall of the city. The perishableness of public inscriptions in eighteenth-century Brussels This article argues that epigraphic fluctuations took place in late medieval and early modern cities and towns, i.e. periods in which public urban space became increasingly or decreasingly inscribed with texts. The analysis of a collection of some fifty public inscriptions registered in Brussels around 1800 reve Read More

Abstract Women on walls. Diversity in (post-)revolutionary Egyptian graffiti The 25 January Revolution in Egypt and its aftermath saw a great rise in the amount of graffiti and street art. It was a medium to challenge official discourse and played a role in forming collective identities and claims. In the wake of Mubarak’s deposition, the immediately apparent heterogeneity within the Egyptian public sphere contrasted sharply with th Read More

Abstract ‘Vermaas, la vache qui rit’. Military graffiti as an archaeological and historical source in understanding military culture This photo-essay presents two case studies in modern Dutch military graffiti and wall art in the late nineteenth-century fortress Fort benoorden Spaarndam and the early twentieth-century military barracks of the city of Ede. The case studies connect two related trends in archaeological and historical Read More