Mass Graves Research Articles

The plague’s impact paleodemographic and genetic measures in 15th to 16th century Gdańsk

Yersinia pestis caused plagues and haunted Gdańsk several times during the 15th and 16th centuries. This study focuses on the following demographic effects: 1/ distributions of deceased by age in a plagued city, 2/ parameters of the life tables, 3/ estimation of the natural increase. To assess genetic effects of the plague, measures of the opportunity for natural selection were considered. Skeletal remains of 283 people from the 15th – 16th century ossuary 3009 from the Dominican Monastery in Gdańsk provided research material. Yersinia pestis DNA in this skeletal material has already been found (Morozowa et al. 2017, 2020). Distributions of the deceased by age in the study sample were compared with those for Gdańsk before the plague and with those for the mass burial of plague victims in the 14th century Lübeck. Neither catastrophic mortality was found in the material studied, nor selective nature of the plague with regard to sex and age had been demonstrated. Using the Weiss method, the rate of natural increase r=–0.005 was reconstructed. With the wide dating range of the ossuary and the fact that it contains results of both the epidemic and “normal” mortality, the natural increase value at this level seems justified. There was a deterioration in the values of life tables parameters, especially life expectancy. Newborn life expectancy dropped to 19.5–22.6 years and for a 20-year-old to 17.7 years. The measures of opportunity for natural selection also deteriorated primarily due to child mortality: the biological state index Ibs values were low (within the 0.3–0.4 range) and values of the Im Crow’s index about 1.0. Natural selection also acted on adults as evidenced by values of the gross potential reproduction rate Rpot below 0.7. Demographically the study sample was at the level of the early Middle Ages rather than the Rennaisance.

Korban Penghilangan Paksa pada Konflik Aceh; Upaya Pemulihan dan Pemenuhan Hak Korban Melalui Mekanisme KKR Aceh

Conflict victims are important entities in maintaining peace. However, after 16 years of peace in Aceh, there are still many victims and families of conflict victims who have not fully received attention, especially the families of victims of enforced disappearances during the Aceh conflict. Indeed, they need certainty about the whereabouts or status of their missing family members. This study examines the status of victims of enforced disappearances during the Aceh conflict and what rights of victims or victims' heirs can be resolved through the mechanism of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This research uses the perspective of history, law and human rights. The data used come from various sources. The data are then analysed, narrated and described qualitatively. The results of the study indicate that there are several steps that can be taken to carry out the rights of victims and families of victims of enforced disappearances, namely through a court decision process, in the context of Aceh carried out by the Mahkamah Syar'iyah. Courts need to establish legal status for victims as a form of recognition that enforced disappearances occurred during the conflict. After obtaining legal certainty, the next step is to accomplish the right of reparation through the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation. Then, followed by granting residence status; provision of missing person certificate; compensation for deceased victims; memorialization of victims; and excavation of mass graves.

Forensic Performances: Searching for Justice in NAKA Dance Theater's BUSCARTE: Duet

This article uncovers the connections between the legal and scientific art of searching for human remains and theatrical performances. NAKA Dance Theater, a performance group based in Mexico City and Oakland, California, is at the centre of this intersection of art and forensics. Founded by José Navarrete and Debby Kajiyama, NAKA creates theatrical events to configure a claim for social justice where the official legal–scientific terrain has failed to protect victims of state repression. These artists advance a commitment to what I call forensic performances, and their investigative practices revitalize theatrical experience in a time of debilitated democracies. Forensic performances give theatre a role in violent societies where mass graves are woven into life: they carry out some of the work of investigative journalism, without its dangers. Theatre opens up a space to do a forensics that is orthogonal to a state forensics claiming a certain kind of reality and truth that is dangerous for democratic politics.

Strontium isotope identification of possible rural immigrants in 17th century mass graves at St. Gertrude Church cemetery in Riga, Latvia

AbstractThe aims of this study were to explore the origins of 19 children buried in two mass graves and the general cemetery at the post‐medieval St Gertrude Church cemetery in Riga, Latvia, using strontium isotope analysis (87Sr/86Sr), and to establish local soil Sr biosphere ranges from faunal samples from two areas of Latvia. The results confirmed the presence of one clear outlier in the population and one child who may have had originated from the region of Vidzeme. The lack of significant differences in 87Sr/86Sr between the other individuals analysed suggested that they were representative of one population. A strong correlation between 87Sr/86Sr ratios and previously obtained mean δ13C and δ15N values in children from mass graves suggested possible short‐term dietary changes with increased proportion of marine resources and food sources subject to sea spray. The study has yielded the first comparative 87Sr/86Sr data from archaeological skeletons in Latvia, which will be essential for future research addressing comparative mobility studies in the region.

Now and Forever: Creating Knowledge to Honor People

After the restoration of democracy in Spain, the victims of the dictatorship were never recognized and the murderers were never judged. Silence was the norm in reference to the Civil War, the dictatorship, and the people who fought for democracy. Only a few civil society organizations and other similar groups tried to reclaim the memory of the victims by looking for their remains in mass graves and ditches and telling a different history than the official one presented in the textbooks. One of these groups is adult learners in the adult education school M. R. in Seville, Spain. They try, from the stories of common people, to create new knowledge and to restore the memory of and honor the victims. They are doing this by recovering oral testimonies and biographies and publishing them as a collective history. In the article, I will present the research conducted by these adult learners. It can be considered participatory research because it enables individuals to restore their memories, to create new knowledge confronting the official narrative, and, through publications and public speeches, to disseminate this knowledge and organize community practices honoring the victims.

Violence in Hasmonean Judea: Skeletal evidence of a massacre from 2nd–1st century BCE Jerusalem

AbstractDuring a salvage excavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority, a mass grave containing the skeletal remains from 124 individuals, many with evidence of weapon injuries, was discovered in a water cistern outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Radiocarbon dates derived from human bone and the date of the material finds suggest the skeletal remains date to the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 1st century BCE. The aim of this research is to analyze the weapon injuries in order to reconstruct the nature and context of this violence. The human skeletal remains from 23 individuals recovered from the cistern were selectively retained and examined macroscopically in a laboratory setting. Silicone casts of selected weapon injuries (n = 5) were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy. Numerous examples of peri‐mortem blunt‐ and sharp‐force trauma were observed including evidence that at least 16 individuals were decapitated. The extent and nature of the observed injuries as well as the evidence of their haphazard deposition into the cistern suggest that these individuals were the victims of a massacre. As a highly visible act of violence, massacres are often used as a mechanism for social control. When contextualized, this skeletal assemblage is most likely evidence of a massacre that occurred during the reign of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus. This is the first archeological evidence for the use of socially sanctioned violence to legitimize the Hasmonean state and to maintain social control at the end of the 2nd century–early 1st century BCE.

Testimony in Place: Witnessing the Holocaust in Belarus

ABSTRACT Holocaust killing sites in Eastern Europe are of increasing interest to scholars and the public. This article analyzes the production of video testimonies in situ to consider the question of witnessing the Holocaust in Belarus, where mass graves of Jews are at once ubiquitous and invisible. Foregrounding the French organization Yahad–In Unum's efforts to identify and memorialize these killing sites, the article proposes a spatially aware reading of the audio-visual historiography produced in the former Pale of Jewish settlements. Place here functions as both a trigger of memory and a reminder of the nature of the genocide in Belarus as embedded in a larger context of violence and destruction. Confronted with a unique set of spatial parameters, viewers of these video testimonies are exposed to the legacies of the atrocities in the present and encouraged to develop an understanding of the Holocaust that recognizes its social and environmental repercussions.

MONUMENTS TO CHINESE INTERNATIONALIST WARRIORS IN THE URALS: FROM THE HEROIZATION OF BOLSHEVISM TO TOURIST INFRASTRUCTURE OBJECTS

The article is devoted to the analysis of the phenomenon of the evolution of the century of collective historical memory on the example of the change in attitude towards the monuments to Chinese soldiers in the Urals during the First World War in the 20th century. An analysis of the concepts of historical memory of recent decades shows that its formation and development is influenced not only by the event of the past, but also by the current political moment. Initially emerging as mass graves, the monuments to Chinese soldiers became objects of commemoration only in the 1950s, during the celebration of the anniversaries of the USSR and the Civil War. In the post-Soviet period, they lost their status as objects of memory for the heroes of Bolshevism, but became the subject of close attention from the People's Republic of China, which was gaining political strength. Under this pressure, local authorities and public organizations maintained the monuments in proper condition, although in the village Troitsa the memorial was “transferred”, and the passage to it was built up with elite real estate. In the last decade, monuments have again begun to attract interest, this time not only from the PRC authorities, but also from local tour operators as commercially profitable objects to attract tourists from China. This evolution in the perception of historical monuments demonstrates how dependent the collective historical memory is not only on the events of the past, but also on the present.

Remarks by Harold Hongju Koh

What was distinctive about this event is that it is not just the use of force for aggression. This is the use of blatant war crimes as a tool of naked aggression. The Russians started war crimes from day one, indiscriminate shelling from afar. We now see, in Bucha, that when they got up close, they tortured people; they bound them; in the case of women, they raped them; they summarily executed them; and they threw them into mass graves. This is one of the most blatant combinations of atrocity and aggression we have seen in many decades.

Проблемы изучения, сохранения и презентации историко-культурного наследия эпохи Гражданской войны в Сибири на примере фондов Музея-заповедника «Шушенское»

Historical and cultural heritage is a colossal arsenal in the study of the problems of the Civil War. The territory of the Shushenskaya Volost, which was part of the Minusinsk Uyezd, was distinguished by its opposition to the Bolshevik government and the presence of numerous hotbeds of the insurgent movement against the Soviet government. The presence of abandoned monuments in the region makes us think about the volume of preserved materials on the history of the Civil War, which are able to reflect the peculiarities and patterns of the region. The article highlights the types of historical and cultural monuments of the Civil War period, gives them a brief description with the designation of common problems. The key problem is the preservation of monuments; their lack of demand in educational, cultural and educational activities is noted. Most of the historical sources need restoration and conservation, many of them have lost their functionality for society. Using the example of the museum's collection, it is important to note that not only written and documentary sources can be classified as historical and cultural heritage, but also real estate monuments, mass graves, personal belongings of war participants. The analysis of the preserved historical monuments of the Civil War period was used as a research method, and their classification by type was carried out. In the course of working with objects, full-scale studies of objects were used. The author comes to the conclusion that the history of the Civil War should be considered and studied through the prism of the preserved historical and cultural heritage. Monuments should be systematically cared for, studied and popularized. It is advisable to create a thematic catalog of the preserved heritage, which will be used in further museum work. Only a timely appeal to the heritage, in this case of the period of the Civil War, will allow preserving the memory of dramatic events and ensure the revival of monuments. Only the use of authentic sources will allow us to give an impartial assessment of the events and look at them differently. At the moment, decisions have been made on the restoration of documentary monuments and the registration of some of them in the main fund of the museum in order to ensure the accessibility of citizens of the Russian Federation to objects through the State Catalog of the Museum Fund of the Russian Federation. The analysis of the preserved heritage complex will allow presenting the material to a wide range of researchers, museum workers for further work with objects within the framework of scientific, cultural, educational, exhibition activities.

ВИЗНАЧЕННЯ ЗОН ОХОРОНИ ДЛЯ РІЗНИХ ТИПІВ ПАМ’ЯТОК ТА ОБ’ЄКТІВ КУЛЬТУРНОЇ СПАДЩИНИ

Only part of the historical heritage that has a legal status as a "monument", is on the protection of the Ukrainian state. Because now the process of creating a national geospatial database is underway in Ukraine, it is necessary to determine the actual protection zones for all these monuments. The method of determining protection zones for cultural monuments, which is enshrined in Ukrainian law now, doesn't include all types of monuments. It applies only to architectural monuments, including separate buildings and ensembles. After the repeal of the decree that applied to all types of monuments in 2002, the method of determining protection zones for the historical monuments, archeological monuments, objects of monumental art, objects of science and technology, historical landscapes, and historical gardens isn't defined. It is recommended to expand the range of the protected architectural heritage by including in protection zones all objects of valuable historical buildings in the historical cities. Thus, it is proposed to link the protection zones not only with separate monuments and ensembles but also with the most valuable areas of historic cities. In order not to provoke subjectivity and misusage, it is necessary to fix in the legal field the method of defining protection zones for those types of monuments that are not currently described. There is a possibility to partly use old practice when the protection zones define as a circle around the base point of the monuments. It can use for single small objects which sizes aren't more than 3х3 m. But for all other objects, the protection zones should be defined around the territory of the monuments. They should consider the specific requirements for the preservation of specific types of monuments, such as the possible boundaries of mass graves that cannot be established visually, or the possible shifting of land layers when establishing the boundaries of archaeological sites. It is also necessary to consider the conditions of the visual perception of the monuments, which depend on the environment in which these monuments are located. A separate legal issue is to define protection zones for monuments that have been included in the protection lists before the setting of modern rules for the description of cultural heritage sites. The methodology for defining protection zones should take into account the existence of such errors in the descriptions and clearly define the procedure at these rates.

New research of mass grave No. III at Mohács

In 2009, the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs renewed the archaeological research of the Battle of Mohács (1526) with outside partners (Bertók et al. 2020, 107–118). The goals of the initiative have been to identify the exact location of the historic clashes, reconstruct the chain of the related events, and conduct a scientific analysis of the final resting place of the soldiers who fell on the battlefield. We planned to complete the project by the upcoming 500th anniversary of the battle. In our hopes, this research has enabled an expansion of the current national memorial site where the remains of the heroes who sacrified their lives to protect their Hungarian homeland could finally be laid to rest. The project has provided us with a fitting opportunity to summarize previous work and present the findings of the archaeological excavations conducted in 2020–2021.

«ДАНЬ УВАЖЕНИЯ МУЖЕСТВУ, СТОЙКОСТИ, ДОБЛЕСТИ ЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСКОЙ»: СОХРАНЕНИЕ ПАМЯТИ О ВЕЛИКОЙ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ВОЙНЕ В ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ КРЫМСКОГО ОТДЕЛЕНИЯ УООПИКа

Establishment of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments was the result of a search for solutions to the problems that had accumulated in the field of monuments protection by the mid-1960s. One of the priority directions in its activity was the preservation of the memory of the Great Patriotic War. The Crimean department of the organization began its work in 1966. The society was engaged in the improvement of mass graves, monuments and memorial sites. With his participation, work was carried out on the creation, repair and restoration of obelisks, the installation of memorial tablets. The search activity associated with the identification of abandoned memorable objects, the establishment of the names of the soldiers buried in unmarked graves was of great importance. The popularization of knowledge among the population about memorial sites associated with the Great Patriotic War was carried out through the release of popular science literature, publications in periodicals, public lectures, and campaigns to places of military glory.

Преступления нацизма в годы Великой Отечественной войны 1941-1945 гг. по документам архивов Северо-Запада России и Республики Беларусь

The article draws on archival documents to show the nature of the Nazi occupation regime on the border territories of the North-West of Russia and in Belarus. The relevance of the study springs from the region’s specifics in the wartime due to its long occupation by the Nazi armies and formation of stable occupation administration, active resistance to the invaders and existence of partisan zones. The chronological framework is 1941–44, i.e. the period of occupation of the region. The significance of the problem of occupation of border territories of the North-West of Russia and Belarus has incited considerable research interest. The study uses comparative-historical and statistical methods, as well as methods of source studies, structural/diachronic and system analysis. The source base is numerous archival documents, primarily, acts of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices and the Damage They Caused to Citizens, Collective Farms, Public Organizations, State Enterprises and Institutions of the USSR (ChGK), acts of local (district, city and regional) commissions, eyewitness accounts, dispatches and special reports of intelligence officers and partisans, reports, information notes, transcripts and minutes of meetings of the party and Soviet bodies, materials of medical examinations of mass graves of victims. The documentary base also includes documents of personal provenance: letters and memoirs. A large group of documents is made up of acts of district and village commissions to investigate the atrocities of the Nazi invaders. The acts contribute to identification and investigation of the atrocities in form of murder, torture, humiliation, and violence against Soviet citizens and prisoners of war, as well as deportation to slave labor. The acts contain information on the activities of the Nazi punitive detachments. The plight of Soviet citizens abducted to Germany can be assessed in their memoirs and letters to relatives and friends. The brutal crimes of Nazism committed on the border territories of the North-West of Russia and Belarus are also evidenced in interrogation protocols of residents as witnesses of the events. The fonds of the Leningrad and Belarusian headquarters of the partisan movement store documents of investigations conducted by partisan formations, which not only show the scope of the anti-fascist struggle in the region, but also contain information on the situation in the areas occupied by the enemy. German documents also deserve attention. They contain information on the structure of administrative and economic institutions, state of agriculture and industry, taxes and fees. The article notes that the entire complex of archival materials reveals the criminal nature of the Nazi occupation regime. New archival documents are still being found, containing data on most serious crimes and atrocities, responsibility for which has no limitations period.

Sounding Suspension and the Unresolved: Pandemic Grief as Accumulation in Coco Fusco’s Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word

ABSTRACT Coco Fusco’s video Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word (2021) grapples with the affects, temporalities, silences, and losses of the COVID-19 pandemic that continue to be unevenly experienced, even in death. The film centers on New York’s Hart Island, where a mass grave was reopened during the pandemic; those whose bodies were not claimed within forty-eight hours were buried there, interred by those imprisoned on Rikers Island. While critical receptions of the work have focused on its visual components, particularly the use of aerial drone images of the island and of Fusco in a rowboat, this article examines how the sonic components of the work—the sounds of the waves, the narration performed by poet Pamela Sneed, and the experimental violin music composed and performed by Pauline Kim Harris—draw the viewer into an affective engagement with the suspended grief of the pandemic. Drawing on works from ethnic studies, sound studies, and memory studies, this article argues that Fusco uses suspension as a visual and sonic strategy to reckon with how unresolved social histories accumulate and can be felt in the body, prompting movement toward modes of care and remembrance that refuse violent bureaucratic logics of desensitization and discardability.

Keepers of the Grave: Ritual Guides, Ghosts, and Hidden Narratives in Indonesian History

The 1965 killings in Indonesia brought about the incarceration, disappearances, and deaths of 500,000 to one million alleged members of the Indonesian Communist Party. This article concentrates on several suspected mass graves in Central Java reputed to have supernatural energy emanating from the violent deaths of the individuals buried there. These sites also have gatekeepers or juru kunci bridging the living and the spirits inhabiting these spaces. This research asks, How do these sites, through their juru kunci, elucidate a past which continues to be silenced? I posit that through contact with the souls of the executed, these gatekeepers utilize an ethereal connection to subvert the state’s enforced silence. These sites also provide a ritual space transforming these ghosts into ancestors worthy of remembrance. By reclaiming the identities of those murdered, the living and the dead can achieve a kind of localized spiritual reconciliation.

Grave of the Globular Amphora culture from Koszyce in the chronological perspective

The grave of the Globular Amphora culture from site 2 in Koszyce, near Kraków, has already been the subject of a separate monograph and specialised analyses. This article addresses the chronology of the mass burial, resulting from a comparison of 23 radiocarbon dates obtained in three laboratories. The chronometric data were then juxtaposed with the results of isotopic analyses of strontium (87Sr/86Sr), carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N). The analysis of the results indicates that the burial from Koszyce should most likely be dated to around 2880–2870 BC, which is slightly earlier than assumed in previous studies. It comes from a time when the Final Eneolithic barrow communities of the Corded Ware culture had already been present in the loess uplands of western Lesser Poland, and the burial ritual of some of the GAC groups was evolving towards the ritual of the Złota culture. The similar dating of these cultural phenomena makes it difficult to determine which community was responsible for the mass murder committed at Koszyce.

Absolute chronology of the Globular Amphora funeral complex at Malice, Sandomierz Upland

The article presents new radiocarbon datings made for a funeral complex from Malice, site 1, located on the Sandomierz Upland and related to the Globular Amphora culture. The complex included at least two human graves (features no. 32 and 33) and two animal deposits or sacrificial pits (no. 31 and probably 54). Feature 32 was a collective grave including five burials (of a male, a female and three children), while in Feature 33 the only one disarticulated human skeleton has been excavated. Pit 31 contained at least three animal individuals. It is possible the unexamined Pit 54 also contained animal depositions. The described features probably formed two clusters, each of which included a human grave and an accompanying pit with animal deposits. Altogether ten radiocarbon dates were obtained with the dated bone samples coming from five human skeletons found in Graves 32 and 33, and animal remains from Pit 31. The calibration results point to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC and stay between 2909 and 2472 BC (with the probability of 95.4%) or more precisely between 2898 and 2490 BC (probability of 68.2%). However, thanks to the stratigraphic documentation it was possible to determine that five deceased from Feature 32 were buried in three phases most likely to ca. 2850–2750 BC. It is highly probable that individual burials were separated by short time intervals. A similar age should be adopted for Feature 31 – a sacrificial pit linked to Grave 32. However, it is not possible to determine with any certainty the age of Grave 33: it could have been contemporaneous with, or slightly younger (ca 2620–2500 BC) than Feature 32.

Francisco Franco Is Back: The Contested Reemergence of a Fascist Moral Exemplar

AbstractBased on long-term ethnographic research on contemporary exhumations of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), as well as analysis of the exhumation of Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen, this paper looks at the ways in which the dictator’s moral exemplarity has evolved over time since his military victory in 1939. During the early years of his dictatorship, Franco’s propaganda machine built the legend of a historical character touched by divine providence who sacrificed himself to save Spain from communism. His moral charisma was enriched by associating his historical mission with a constellation of moral exemplars drawn from medieval and imperial Spain. After his death, his moral exemplarity dwindled as democratic Spain embraced a political discourse of national reconciliation. Yet, since 2000, a new negative exemplarity of Franco as a war criminal has come into sharp focus, in connection with the exhumation of the mass graves of tens of thousands of Republican civilians executed by his army and paramilitary. In recent years, Franco has reemerged as a fascist exemplar alongside a rise of the extreme right. To understand the revival of his fascist exemplarity, I focus on two processes: the rise of the political party Vox, which claims undisguised admiration for Franco’s legacy (a process I call “neo-exemplarity”), and the dismantling in October 2019 of Franco’s honorable burial and the debate over the treatment that his mortal remains deserve (a process I call “necro-exemplarity”).

Medieval mass burial in Pereslavl-Zalessky

The paper presents the results of the anthropological study of a mass grave located in the grounds of the kremlin of Pereslavl-Zalessky (European Russia). It has been preliminary dated to the 13th — first half of the 14th century. This study is aimed at craniological investigation and establishing anthropological connections of the Medieval population of Pereslavl-Zalessky, as well as clarification of the circumstances of appearance of the mass burial within the town territory with the aid of anthropological methods. The human remains were analyzed to identify the number of individuals and to determine their sex and age. Determination of sex and age and recording of injuries were carried out on the craniological material. The craniological program was used to study 28 male and 16 female skulls. A canonical discriminant analysis was used for the intergroup analysis. The mass burial contained separated bones of 80 adults and 19 children. It was possible to identify 30 males and 24 females. The male component of the group was represented by virtually all age groups. The female part comprised mainly women aged 20–35. Therefore, the interred were placed in the grave spontaneously, considerably later after their death; the bodies had time to decompose completely. Eleven instances of skull injuries without signs of necrotic process and healing were recorded. The location and characteristics of the burial and presence of several instances of fatal lacerated wounds indicate that the city residents died in the course of a military clash. Therefore, the studied series represents a time slice of the population of the medieval city. The canonical discriminant analy-sis on the craniological series of 53 revealed that the studied series is distinct from the territorially and chronologically close series of Yaroslavl and Kostroma Krivichs. It also showed that the formation of the population of Pereslavl-Zalessky was strongly influenced by the migration of the Ilmen Slovens and Smolensk-Polotsk Krivichs. Among the specifics of the Pereslavl series, also noteworthy is the strong influence of southern Russian migrants. On the contrary, the influence of the Finno-Ugric morphological component on the urban population of the 13th–14th centuries was very insignificant.