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From the battlefield to the labour camp: archaeology of civil war and dictatorship in Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Alfredo González-Ruibal*
Affiliation:
Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), San Roque 2, 15704 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
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The author explores responses to political violence through the materiality of three aspects of the Civil War in Spain: military lines in the battle for Madrid, a concentration camp in Extremadura and a remote settlement of forced labourers and their families. He shows how archaeology's revelations reflect, qualify and enrich the story of human survival under the pall cast by a dictatorship. Sharing the inquiry with the public of today also revealed some of the disquieting mechanisms by which history is composed and how archaeology can be used to deconstruct it.

Type
Research article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

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