British Commercial Archaeology: Antiquarians and Labourers; Developers and Diggers

Abstract

The resistance to fascism and the social revolution during the Spanish Civil War have been referred to almost romantically by progressive people in many countries of the world. The primary goal of the Catalan archaeologists is to establish a place for archaeology and scientific research in the civil movement for the recovery of historical memory in Spain. The Spanish dictatorship deported several thousand Spaniards to occupied France where they were eliminated in concentration camps. The study of the Franco regime allows the understanding of a model which, to a great extent, was followed by the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. One of the central aspects of the collaboration of American investigators is to produce Catalonian specialists in forensic anthropology and archaeology. The Catalan municipality of Camarassa and a group of archaeologists from the University of Barcelona sponsored an excavation of the trenches of the front lines, which happen to be located in a late Iron Age site.