Page 51 - Archaeology - October 2017

The intimidating karstic landscape of
Asturias, in northern Spain, provided
many places for guerrilla fighters to
hide in the contentious years after
Francisco Franco’s victory in the
Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s.

Landscape

of Secrets

Archaeologists confront painful memories of the
Spanish Civil War
by Samir S. Patel

sturias is spain’s inner rchaeologist alfonso fanjul
northern coast has a A
keep. This region on peraza hikes to a peak called
the Puerto Ventana as clouds flow
“moat,” the Bay of Biscay, through the valleys below. Above a wreath
on one side, and the Can- of purple wildflowers, the peak is crowned
Atabrian Mountains as its by a zigzag trench carved directly into the
southern ramparts. The local culture, which limestone, with a large dugout cave in the
dates back to the Paleolithic and took center. By Fanjul’s reckoning, the dugout
shape under Celtic influence in the Iron on Puerto Ventana is what he terms an
Age, has proven resistant to outside influ- “artificial battlefield cave.” To gain insight
ences. The Romans subdued the Astures, into the nature and evolution of resistance
as the province’s people are called, but in Asturias, he is working on a typology
never truly conquered them. The Astures of the caves used both during the war and
repulsed the Goths in the fourth century, for decades afterward, as the repressive
and halted the Moorish invasion in the regime of Francisco Franco exercised its
eighth. Asturias was the birthplace of the power and the remaining Republicans took
Reconquista, or the Christian reconquest of to the mountains to escape its wrath. In
Islamic Spain. Even today, the province is archaeology, establishing a typology is a key
an autonomous principality, and the heir step toward understanding a collection of
to the Spanish throne is the “Prince of sites or artifacts—a classification that dis-
Asturias.” Its mountains are the last habitat tinguishes sites used in different ways and
of Spain’s brown bears. Asturias was not, allows for direct comparisons. For Fanjul, it
however, spared from a threat that arrived is an empirical, reasoned way to investigate
from within. In the late 1930s, the Spanish a bloody, intimate conflict.
Civil War divided cities, towns, and even In Spain, the Civil War is a loaded subject
families throughout the land. Today, con- for any kind of archaeology. To many, this
cealed in this majestic, peaceful terrain is history is inherently political and problem-
archaeological evidence of a unique aspect atic, a threat to the delicate, collective amne-
of the struggle as it played out here in the sia that now cloaks Franco’s brutal 36-year
north—but resistance to unearthing these reign. “No one wants to know anything,”
painful memories is profound. Fanjul says. “It’s like nothing happened.” As

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