Page 52 - Archaeology - October 2017

generations pass, however, some are beginning to recognize in many ways we don’t,” González-Ruibal says. “It can actually
the value of this research. Fanjul, for his part, is documenting a change the way the history of the war is told.” But it will take
landscape-wide battlefield and crafting a cultural history of the time and cultural will, which is in short supply. The current,
war and its aftermath in Asturias. right-leaning Spanish government offers no support for histori-
At the beginning of the war, Asturian workers, farmers, cal archaeology. “It was difficult before,” he says, “and now in
and miners successfully defended Puerto Ventana against some cases it is more or less impossible.”
Nationalist forces, though Asturias did eventually fall. In the
aftermath, groups of guerrillas roamed the mountains, often ver cloudy asturian cider, ritually poured from
using caves—natural and artificial—as headquarters and hide- O above the bartender’s head, Fanjul, whose doctoral
outs. Fanjul’s interest rests on the largely untrained locals who work centered on an Iron Age hillfort, explains what
evolved from determined soldiers to heroic guerrillas, only to happened when he proposed a side project of Civil War
become antsy fugitives and, finally, loathed bandits. archaeology to his colleagues at the Autonomous University of
Madrid: “They laughed.” Even so, he pressed on, aspiring to a
or all the global geopolitical factors that coalesced neutral approach, which has led him to turn down money to
in the Spanish Civil War—sometimes considered the excavate mass grave sites. “When the archaeology is opening
Fbeginning of World War II—some of the first dominoes a grave, it’s like opening a wound that has never healed.” He
fell in Asturias. Following years of jockeying for dominance adds, “The concept of trenches and mass graves as Spanish
among political factions, in 1934 Asturian miners staged an Civil War archaeology doesn’t match the reality of the con-
armed revolt opposing the rise of right-wing elements in the flict.” Fanjul’s “Archaeology of Violence in Asturias” project
government. The revolt was put down, viciously, by a relatively began in 2012 as a way to understand a battlefield comprised
unknown general from Spanish Morocco—Francisco Franco of a beautiful, living landscape overlaid with conflict, violence,
Bahamonde. Tensions increased, and soon war became inevi- and resistance that spanned decades. He has excavated near
table. The coup began in July 1936 as Franco’s unified National- Asturias’ capital, Oviedo (see “House to House,” page 53), but
ist movement, supported by Nazi Germany, fascist
Italy, and Catholic militias, took on a loose and
fractious Republican coalition of secularists, social-
ists, communists, and anarchists. After three years of
pitched conflict, including summary executions and
guerrilla warfare, the Nationalists prevailed in April
1939. Franco’s autocratic rule lasted until his death
in 1975, and only then was the country able to begin
the transition to democracy.
The record of any conflict would seem to be a nat-
ural and significant subject for research, but appar-
ently not this war in this place. Alfredo González-
Ruibal, an archaeologist at Complutense University
of Madrid, says, “There is not a strong tradition of
historical archaeology in Spain.” In his experience,
which includes excavating camps, trenches, and mass
graves from the war, people perceive this archaeology
as a political act that favors the narrative of one side,
usually the left, over that of the other. “There’s this
idea in Spanish society that with the Civil War—it is Nationalist soldiers pass through hills during the Spanish Civil War. This
better not to touch it,” he says. “It’s something that professional, seasoned, Nazi-supported fighting force defeated the
irregular Republican army, driving many of those fighters underground.
is, let’s say, polluting.”
Archaeological research of Spanish Civil War sites only still has no official home for the finds, primarily personal items
began around 1999 with the excavation of a Republican trench and military gear, for now meticulously catalogued and stored
in Madrid and the exhumation of a mass grave, according to in his family’s home in the village of Limanes.
González-Ruibal. “This is not a coincidence,” he says, explain-
ing that this new interest represents a generational change— s nationalist forces descended on Madrid, the
“the grandchildren of the war.” Though the Spanish Civil War army in Oviedo pledged allegiance to Franco and held
was extensively documented as it unfolded, it doesn’t have a Athe city against a Republican siege. When Nationalist
generally accepted master narrative—as World War II does, reinforcements arrived via a coastal route, the fractious, largely
for example. Further, there has been little push, nationally or untrained Republican army splintered. Some fighters went
internationally, for restorative justice or truth commissions. home, others escaped to the province of León and the plains
“Archaeology is a window into a past we think we know, but of Castilla, and a few, including some of their leadership, fled

50 ARCHAEOLOGY • September/October 2017