Exhumation Of Graves Research Articles

Archaeological Evidence of Gender Differences in Violent Repression

This article discusses women who were either executed by military firing squad or killed extrajudicially during the Spanish Civil War and the Franocist dictatorship, based on evidence from the scientific exhumation of common graves in the twenty-first century. The evidence sheds light on an aspect of Francoist repression that previously has received little attention from scholars and for which few written sources are available, in contrast to executions and killings of men. Archaeological and forensic studies have documented the circumstances of how the women in the graves died, revealing differences between military executions and how extrajudicial killings were conducted. A comparison with findings from male remains found in common graves reveals gendered differences in materiality and in how victims were treated before, during and after death.

Metody wykorzystywane przez polskich kryminalistyków i archeologów przy eksploracji mogił – różnice i zbieżności

There seem to be a lot of differences between archaeology and forensic science but, when we take a closer look, we may find out that some methods and goals may be similar, especially on the ground of exhumation of graves. Since the early 90s, in Poland, archaeologists more often started to take part in investigations covering mass murders and crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War. It occurred that their methodology is providing best results in this kind of work. At first, archeologists started only as consultants but then they were given a possibility to lead their own field of excavations in that area of interest. Moreover, it led to creating a new subdiscipline called forensic archaeology. It is hard to tell the difference between archaeological and forensical field methods of exhuming graves. Archaeological literature is way more precise in describing that topic, whereas police experts are thought to provide general procedures of securing a crime scene. The most obvious differences between the two fields in question are visible in the methods of documentation. However, there is no doubt that the specialists in each of the disciplines have learned a lot from each other since they decided to cooperate in some specific cases.

Unearthing, untangling and re-articulating genocide corpses in Rwanda

This paper is concerned with the mass graves and exhumed bodies of victims of the Rwanda genocide and war of the 1990s. A government-led programme of exhumation of mass burials and individual graves has taken place over the last decade. The exhumation of mass graves has been undertaken, in the main, by Tutsi genocide survivors who work under the supervision of state officials. Post-unearthing, these bodies are unravelled, and the remnants of soft flesh, clothing, personal possessions and bones are separated from each other. Skeletal structures are fully disarticulated and the bones pooled into a vast collective, for placement within memorials. The outcome of these exhumations is that remains almost always lack individual identity at the point of reinterring. A productive analytical comparison is found in examining exhumations of Spanish Civil War graves, where the fates of individual dead are closely entangled with the lives of survivors. Here there is a clear contrast with exhumations in Rwanda, in the possible re-articulation of identities with specific human remains. But a similarity is also critical: in both cases the properties of human remains, as unsettling materials, garner specific ‘affects’, which drive forward national political projects that aim to consolidate particular collective memories of conflict, albeit that this kind of ‘material agency’ is mobilized to very different ends in each case.

Memory, Silence, and Democracy in Spain: Federico García Lorca, the Spanish Civil War, and the Law of Historical Memory

What does it mean to unearth the dead? What is contemporary society’s responsibility to the disappeared ? How do we live with the ghosts of history? In the midst of the search for the body of Federico García Lorca in 2009, Emilio Silva, cofounder and president of Spain’s Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH)—a national organization assisting in the location and exhumation of the graves of Spain’s desaparecidos , or disappeared, during the Civil War and its aftermath—wrote of “the silent bones of Federico García Lorca and the skeleton of our democracy.” This essay traces the ways in which the remains of one of Europe’s most resonant twentieth-century dramatists haunt contemporary Spain. In mapping the wider ideological framework in which his work has been produced in Spain, it engages with the politics of a statesanctioned “official” history that has shaped his appropriation by the nation-state. Using the search for Lorca’s corpse in 2009 as a central focus, it examines how the exhumation of mass graves undertaken in twenty-first-century Spain can be viewed as a move toward a more nuanced understanding both of the events of the past and the fissures of the present in a country where issues of justice have been compromised for too long by a culture of silence.

Human rights, human remains: forensic humanitarianism and the human rights of the dead

AbstractThis article has three parts. First, it identifies, defines and characterises a distinctive trend in modern humanitarianism: that of ‘forensic humanitarianism’. Forensic humanitarianism is often deployed in the wake of atrocity to answer two questions: who are the dead, and how were they killed? These questions have been addressed in diverse contexts with the aim of establishing accountability for atrocities and identifying and returning the dead to their families. Examples include the investigation of the crimes of Argentina's junta, the trial for genocide of Guatemala's former President Rios Montt, the return of human remains to families of the dead in the former‐Yugoslavia, and the exhumation of clandestine civil war graves in Spain. Forensic humanitarianism is distinguished by two imperatives that are characteristic of humanitarianism more broadly: adjudicative and ameliorative. These imperatives manifest in the ways in which forensic humanitarianism plays a critical role in justice for atrocity and addresses human suffering. Second, the article historicises the emergence of forensic humanitarianism, showing that it has been shaped by the conjunction of four particular and related histories: humanitarian, legal, political and scientific. Third, and finally, the article asks whether, as a consequence of the practice of forensic humanitarianism, we can argue that the dead, now, can be understood to have human rights.

Violence and the supernatural in Singapore cinema

This article surveys the approach of two important film-makers to the experience of redevelopment projects and the spatial reconfigurations of the urban landscape in Singapore. Tan Pin Pin's documentary Moving House depicts the violent collision of modern development with traditional rituals, showing the mass exhumation and transfer of graves to apartment-like style blocks to accommodate public housing construction. The ghosts of the dead return to such public housing estates in Eric Khoo's fiction film 12 Storeys (1997) to pass through the claustrophobic spaces of alienation containing the struggles of upward mobility. In such examples, the supernatural and fantastic provide a violent reconstruction of the social memory of postcolonial Singapore.

Exhumation of mass graves in Iraq: considerations for forensic investigations, humanitarian needs, and the demands of justice.

ACROSS WAR-TORN IRAQ, IRAQIS HAVE BEGUN TO REveal the horrors of nearly a quarter century of repressive rule. Former political prisoners have led journalists and human rights investigators to prisons where torture and summary executions reportedly were routine. Municipal grave diggers, shepherds, and farmers have publicly disclosed the whereabouts of mass graves believed to hold the bodies of those who disappeared during the rule of Saddam Hussein. Lacking adequate forensic expertise and in the absence of international assistance, Iraqis have been exhuming some of these graves in a manner that prevents forensic identification of most of the remains and possibly brings greater mental anguish to the relatives of the deceased. For example, in May 2003, at 2 sites located near the Mahawil military base just north of the southern Iraqi city of Hilla, villagers used a backhoe to dig up more than 2000 sets of remains, gouging and comingling countless skeletons in the process, while some families used their hands to dig for bones and shards of clothing and carted them away in wheelbarrows and buckets. Clearly, the numerous infrastructure, public health, safety, and security needs of Iraq require immediate attention; however, addressing the fate of missing persons will be an important aspect of the long-term restoration of the health and well-being of Iraqis. In this context, coordinated forensic, psychosocial, and logistical support for the Iraqi people may help enable the remains of some of the missing to be exhumed and identified in a humanitarian, scientific, and judicial manner. However, at the time of this writing, US and other coalition authorities have not implemented a plan to help Iraqis recover the remains of their relatives in a dignified manner and to preserve evidence that might convict those responsible for these crimes. Although this may be understandable given the current dire situation in Iraq (ie, ongoing conflict and security threats, infrastructure and public health demands, and the need to prioritize resources), it stands in contrast with the role played by the United States during and after the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia. For example, in 1993, before the conflict in Croatia and Bosnia had ended, the United States had funded and donated field equipment to forensic teams investigating mass graves in those countries under the auspices of the UN Commission of Experts and its successor, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Similarly, after the war in Kosovo, the United States dispatched a team of forensic scientists to the region to investigate graves associated with the purge of ethnic Albanians in the spring of 1999. These forensic investigations were used by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in indictments of war criminals in the former Yugoslavia. The grim spectacle at the Hilla burial pits in Iraq and protests of international human rights organizations prompted the US Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) to take action. In late May 2003, the ORHA (which has since been folded into the Coalition Provisional Authority) announced that it would take measures to secure grave sites, launch a media campaign to explain to the public the necessity of preserving grave sites, and request governments to send forensic teams to Iraq to exhume graves prioritized for forensic investigation. In the meantime, several nongovernmental organizations have become involved. At the onset of the war, 2 USbased human rights organizations, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, sent 10 researchers, including 1 of us (E.S.), to the region to investigate possible violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed by all sides of the conflict. In June, 2 of us (W.D.H. and M.S.) traveled to Iraq on behalf of Physicians for Human Rights to assess local capacities for dealing with the search for missing persons. In addition, a British-based group, the International Forensic Center of Excellence for the

St. Peter's Church, Barton-upon-Humber: Excavation and Structural Study, 1978–81

SummaryFour seasons of excavation and structural study in St. Peter's Church have revealed a complex sequence, beginning with domestic occupation of the Pagan Saxon period, followed by a Middle Saxon settlement enclosure with adjacent cemetery of Christian character. In the later tenth century a three-celled turriform church was built in the cemetery, after the exhumation of graves covering its intended site. Related features in the cemetery include the foundation of a large free-standing cross, a group of wells and an oven, probably for baking bread, all grouped to the east of the chancel. Some of the pre-Conquest graves yielded evidence of probable barkwood coffins built with clenches and roves, while some twenty further graves contained rectangular timber coffins in varying states of preservation. Several were in near-perfect condition and have yielded exceptionally good evidence for techniques and tools employed by Anglo-Saxon carpenters.The extant Saxon and medieval fabric of the church has been recorded in considerable detail, providing an insight into building and scaffolding methods, particularly of the tenth century. Excavation has revealed the complex development of the medieval church and its internal layout; and 1,326 graves, spanning a millennium, have been investigated.