Traces of the Past: Working with Archaeology as Ethnographic Object (original) (raw)
Related papers
[BSc] Constructing the Spanish historical memory: archaeology, mass graves and remembrance.
2011
This dissertation analyses the role archaeologists are playing in Spain within the context of the so-called 'recovery of the historical memory'. I will review how the archaeology of the Spanish Civil War is being constructed by trying to combine very different approaches towards heritage, human rights and political activism. This is a recent and ongoing process which still needs the development of a coherent theoretical base. I will use the exhumation of mass graves as a phenomenon in which the complexities and contradictions of the current situation can be revealed. My main objective is to demonstrate how imperative it is to initiate a deep debate at the heart of the discipline in order to reconsider how archaeologists are joining this social movement. I will review several examples that illustrate the way some academics and professionals are beginning to assume new public responsibilities. This alternative implies defining and defending their own criteria while taking part in broader political controversies. This is precisely what tends to be avoided by those who understand the archaeological practice as an aseptic or apolitical task. In the case of the 'recovery of the historical memory', this conception does relegate archaeologists to a merely technical position with little legitimacy to question their own framework.
Based on 17 months of ethnographic field work on the current exhumation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and subsequent Francisco Franco dictatorship (1939-1975), the dissertation examines the practice of exhuming as a death ritual animated by emotions. A large wealth of literature on the anthropology of death centers on funerary rituals as a way to reveal a people’s social structures and cultural meanings. Yet what happens when the living are denied from performing the rituals surrounding death? What happens to those dead, such as Spanish Republicans killed and left in mass graves, who escape the boundaries of ritual? Never before have Republicans been recognized as victims worthy of reburial until 2000 when a team of experts conducted the first professional exhumation of a Republican mass grave. While the rituals associated with exhuming have had an important impact on Spanish society in that it promises recognition and reburial to Republicans, the Spanish exhumations also project a perspective of the recent past as being resolved through the creation of Republican victims. Underlying the exhumations is the use of the dead body to narrate a particular version of the Spanish past through exhumation practice and ritual. The conditions under which exhuming produces new hierarchies of knowledge via its evaluation of the dead is driven not just by practice, but also emotion. Such feelings of love and loss ultimately determine which remains are excavated (i.e., Republicans), and which are not (i.e., Moroccans and Nationalists). In my ethnography on the Spanish experience of death rituals and emotions, I examine the microcosm of exhumations in relation to a larger framework that situates: (1) exhumation practice as a tool to provide meaning of the violent past in post-dictatorship Spain, and (2) the use of such practices to create knowledge in the aftermath of conflict worldwide. The dissertation concludes with possibilities for understanding how emotions and interests drive the production of knowledge that is more open to personal ways of knowing—an invitation for a critical medical anthropology and science studies approach to exhumation practices.
Archaeologies. Journal of the World Archaeology Congress, 4(3): 429-444, 2008
The recovery of historic memory of the Spanish Civil War is a multilayered initiative to escape both the romanticism of the Franco era, in which only the glory of the victors was celebrated while their past atrocities were ignored, and the cautiousness of the post-Franco democracy, for which forced amnesia of the Civil War was considered a sacrifice for the greater good. In the past five years the efforts to recover historic memory have gained empirical footing by employing archaeological methods to locate, enumerate and identify the victims of extrajudicial executions. The ultimate goals of such work include the production of a more accurate historical statement of past events, the repatriation of missing persons to their families, and the documentation of physical evidence that may allow families to seek civil restitutions. While the scientific methodology is fairly straightforward, the process is nonetheless inherently political in that various government bodies can and do impede recovery efforts. This paper contextualizes the current political and social climate of human rights investigations in Spain by illustrating some of the recent recovery efforts in Catalonia and Andalucia. Le rétablissement de la mémoire historique concernant la guerre civile espagnole est une initiative à plusieurs niveaux pour échapper au romantisme de l’ère franquiste, dans laquelle seule la gloire des vainqueurs était célébrée, tandis que leurs exactions criminelles étaient passées sous silence. La prudence de la démocratie postfranquiste forçait l’amnésie de la guerre civile tout en la considérant comme un sacrifice nécessaire au bien de tous. Au cours de ces cinq dernières années, les efforts déployés pour rétablir la mémoire historique a empiriquement gagné du terrain de façon par l’emploi de méthodes archéologiques destinées à localiser, faire le compte et identifier les victimes d’exécutions extrajudiciaires. Les objectifs ultimes d’un tel travail comprennent la production d’une mémoire historique plus précise des événements passés, la restitution des personnes disparues à leurs familles, et la documentation de preuves physiques qui peuvent conduire les familles à entamer des poursuites judiciaires en vue d’obtenir des compensations. Tandis que la méthodologie scientifique est assez simple et directe, le processus est malgré tout politique par nature et sujet aux divers corps gouvernementaux qui peuvent entraver les efforts déployés. Cet article contextualise la politique et le climat social actuels des enquêtes sur les droits humanitaires en Espagne, en illustrant les efforts récents de rétablissement de la mémoire historique en Catalogne et en Andalousie. La recuperación de la memoria histórica de la Guerra Civil Española es una iniciativa de varios niveles con la que se persigue escapar tanto del romanticismo de la era franquista, en la que sólo se celebraba la gloria de los vencedores ocultando las atrocidades del pasado, y la prudencia de la democracia posterior a Franco, que consideraba la amnesia sobre lo relacionado con la Guerra Civil un sacrificio necesario para disfrutar de más prosperidad. En los últimos cinco años, los esfuerzos para recuperar la memoria histórica han ganado fundamento empírico con el empleo de métodos arqueológicos que permiten localizar, enumerar e identificar las víctimas de las ejecuciones extrajudiciales. El fin último de este trabajo es la recuperación de unos hechos históricos más precisos del pasado, la repatriación de los desaparecidos a sus familias y la documentación de las pruebas físicas que pueden permitir a las familias solicitar restituciones civiles. Aunque el método científico es bastante sencillo, el proceso es sin embargo político en esencia, en el sentido de que los distintos organismos gubernamentales puede constituir un obstáculo a los esfuerzos de recuperación y de hecho, lo hacen. Este trabajo presenta el clima político y social de las investigaciones actuales sobre derechos humanos en España, poniendo como ejemplo algunos de los trabajos recientes de recuperación en Cataluña y Andalucía.
The return of Civil War ghosts: The ethnography of exhumations in contemporary Spain
Anthropology today, 2006
Mass graves resulting from episodes of extreme violence are crucial evidence of the wounds of history, and a key to understanding the dynamics of terror. The intentional jumbling of unidentified corpses in unmarked graves is a source of disorder, anxiety and division in many societies (Robben 2000). As a sophisticated instrument of terror, this type of grave is intended to bury the social memory of violence and thus to strengthen the fear-based regimes of the perpetrators, which can survive for decades. Yet as social and political circumstances evolve, social memory eventually returns to confront these unquiet graves. Events of recent decades in countries such as Argentina, Guatemala,Spain and Rwanda show us precisely this. What happens as a result of these return visits, often involving exhumations, depends on the national and international contexts in which the remains are found, investigated and manipulated(Verdery 1999). This paper explores the contemporary controversies around the exhumation of Civil War (1936-1939) mass graves in Spain, as well as the ethnographic challenges posed by them.
Journal of Material Culture, 2020
The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was triggered by a military uprising against the democratically elected Popular Front government. Away from the battlefield, this war was characterized by the politically-motivated murder of thousands of civilians, many of whom were buried in clandestine graves throughout Spain. Following Franco’s victory and subsequent dictatorship, there were strong prohibitions on commemorating the Republican dead. A radical rupture in Spain’s memory politics occurred from 2000 onwards with the founding of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory and other similar pressure groups that have organized the exhumation and reburial of the Republican dead. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in communities in Castile and León, and Extremadura as they underwent mass grave investigations. It examines the experience of theft and dispossession that occurred as part of the Francoist repression of Republicans. Accounts of these episodes focus on stolen ...
'Not just bones'. A cultural and political history of mass grave exhumations in Spain.
2013
In this paper I analyze the exhumations of mass graves of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and dictatorship (1939–75) as spaces where processes of attribution of meaning take place, and I’ll propose a provisional thesis on how cultural and political meaning is formed through the performance of forensic exhumations of mass graves. Hereby the focus is on the attribution of meaning to the exhumations in the public sphere, or, to say it with the words of Johannes Fabian, I consider death ‘a prime datum of communication’ (Fabian 2004). I argue that not only forensic truth is the object of the exhumations, but also the ‘making of’ truth, as a process of public acknowledgement and identification with the dead.
Exhuming Loss: Memory, Materiality and Mass Graves of the Spanish Civil War
2011
This book examines the contested representations of those murdered during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s in two small rural communities as they undergo the experience of exhumation, identification, and reburial from nearby mass graves. Based on interviews with relatives of the dead, community members and forensic archaeologists, it pays close attention to the role of excavated objects and images in breaking the pact of silence that surrounded the memory of these painful events for decades afterward. It also assesses the significance of archaeological and forensic practices in changing relationships between the living and dead. The exposure of graves has opened up a discursive space in Spanish society for multiple representations to be made of the war dead and of Spain’s traumatic past.