Layla Renshaw

Exhuming loss : memory, materiality, and mass graves of the Spanish Civil War

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 Spains traumatic past.

The scientific and affective identification of Republican civilian victims from the Spanish Civil War

This article addresses the concurrent processes of the scientific and affective identification of human remains, resulting from the excavation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War. Affective identification refers to the reconstruction of locally meaningful identities, recognition amongst the living of affective bonds with the dead, and the emotions of mourning elicited in this process. Drawing on fieldwork in two rural communities in the Burgos region of Spain, it follows the exhumation of mass graves containing the human remains of local Republican civilians, victims of extrajudicial killings during the Spanish Civil War. The long time lapse between these deaths and current exhumations place these events on the boundaries of living memory, creating challenges for the investigative process. Widespread experiences of political repression during Spain’s dictatorship have resulted in a fractured transmission of memories of the dead, making the question of affective and familial bonds with the dead more complex for these communities.

Missing Bodies Near-at-Hand: The Dissonant Memory and Dormant Graves of the Spanish Civil War

This contribution will look at the case of Spain’s mass graves containing the remains of tens of thousands of civilians killed by the Francoist regime during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and its aftermath. These graves are located in both urban and rural communities of all sizes, throughout Spain. Since 2000, these graves and the remains within them have become the focal point for intense investigative and commemorative activity, primarily structured by a campaign to exhume and formally rebury these remains. This campaign has achieved a rupture in the long-held “pact of silence”, which has hitherto surrounded the Civil War. This contribution is based on ethnographic interviews and participant observation in two small rural communities in Castile Leon, while, over three years from 2003, they experienced the extended process of exhumation, identification and reburial of bodies of Republicans buried in unmarked graves on the edge of their communities.

The archaeology of post-medieval death and burial

SUMMARY: The richness of post-medieval mortuary archaeology is explored through a broad number of cases, also identifying trends in research agendas and theoretical approaches, through time. This article considers the archaeology of burial and mourning; the osteological study of demography and health; the reconstruction of the individual biographies of the dead and hitherto marginalized histories, with a focus on the archaeology of the United Kingdom, but with reference to work which has taken place elsewhere, including Europe and North America, reflecting the past emphasis of Post-Medieval Archaeology. The growth of forensic archaeology is discussed, as well as technological developments in the study of the dead. Work on the ontological and ethical status of the dead in archaeology is explored. In conclusion, some of the major challenges to the field, including those of cross-disciplinary work and public engagement, are highlighted.

The dead and their public. Memory campaigns, issue networks and the role of the archaeologist in the excavation of mass graves

This contribution will consider how the practice of archaeology ‘brings a public into being’. Drawing on examples of the excavation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and the First World War, particularly those cases resulting from activism on the part of memory campaign groups, this paper considers how the act of excavation can serve as a catalyst for members of the public to coalesce and deliberate the complex and far-reaching questions associated with the post-mortem treatment and commemoration of the dead. The necessity to fulfil the aims of particular constituencies, such as the relatives of the dead, or the need to maintain a position of impartiality, may militate against the archaeologists full intellectual engagement with these questions, resulting in the archaeologists role being defined primarily by their technical or practical contribution. The concept of the issue network is explored as a way to understand the formation of memory campaigns and the archaeologists relationship with the public. The idea of the network underlines the potential for the archaeologist to make an intellectual contribution that develops and democratizes the debate surrounding an excavation, even if their position is contested, and so bring a wider public into being.

The Recovery and Commemoration of War Dead from Post-Colonial Contexts

This issue explores the recovery and commemoration of war dead who died while part of a colonial or imperial force, as soldiers, or as labourers under military command. This category of war dead is associated with particular complexities and challenges, shaped by relationships of colonialism and imperialism that still reverberate strongly in the present. There has been a very large academic output on the theme of war death and the commemoration of war (Capdevila & Voldman, 2006), and, in recent decades, a growing body of work on the experiences and representations of those soldiers who fought as part of colonial or imperial armies (Das, 2011). However, the specific questions of what happens to those who die in war as part of imperial armies or labour forces, their final resting place, how their physical remains are cared for, and how the dead are remembered in the contemporary societies of both former colonies and former colonial powers, all remain as important themes to be addressed. The articles here explore what happens when the political and cultural relationships between former imperial powers and the nations that once constituted their empire undergo significant change. The meaning of dying in war as part of a colonial force will be dramatically altered once that colonial relationship has ended; yet the bodies of the dead remain as enduring physical traces of armies and polities that no longer exist. The changing status of the dead must be negotiated and represented in new commemorative practices. The bodies, images, cemeteries, and monuments associated with the dead may all become a medium through which to represent political and social change, or may stubbornly resist these new narratives. The dead are potentially a rich representational space, used instrumentally by those in the present to construct a particular version of colonial history. As signifiers of a common past, and a shared experience of sacrifice and loss, they can reiterate the bonds between countries, as a focus of ‘memorial diplomacy’ (Wellings, 2014). Conversely, if the histories they represent are too painful, or cannot be reconciled with contemporary national identities, the dead may not be represented at all, and will fall into neglect. The examples gathered together here encompass histories from Asia, Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia, and are a convincing illustration of the spatial journal of war & culture studies, Vol. 10 No. 4, November, 2017, 267–271

Anzac Anxieties: Rupture, Continuity, and Authenticity in the Commemoration of Australian War Dead at Fromelles

The Battle of Fromelles in Northern France was launched in July 1916. There were 5533 Australian casualties and in the immediate aftermath of the battle, German burial parties buried Allied dead in unmarked pits and the whereabouts of some were forgotten. Recent archaeological and scientific work has resulted in the belated recovery and reburial of these bodies with a new, purpose-built CWGC Cemetery inaugurated in the village of Fromelles in 2010. This article explores the anxieties that the relatives experience during the exhumation and reburial of the dead. These anxieties are allayed, in part, by the unique commemorative culture that has developed over generations in Fromelles. This article will examine the tension between the impetus to preserve the authentic bond fostered between individuals and communities in Fromelles and Australia, and the opposing impetus for greater official recognition, and the investment of state resources, in the military heritage of Fromelles.