Resistance, Refuge, and Retaliation: The Use of Caves during the Spanish Civil War in Asturias

Summary

During the 2014 field season of the Archaeology of Violence in Asturias Project, a survey of caves in the Spanish province of Asturias was undertaken with the aim to document the usage of these subterranean shelters during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and their continued importance as vital landscape features in the guerrilla resistance movement (1939-65). These caves-- as well as other features such as roads, valleys, industrial buildings, and villages-- have long been ignored in anthropological and archaeological projects in Spain in favor of military archaeology-based approaches that focus on more formalized, "official" war sites: trenches, battlefields, and military prisons. This paper argues for a more macroscopic view of the Civil War, moving beyond site-based analysis to inter-site landscape interpretation. The diversity of use-types discovered through the survey of the caves as well as the caves’ articulation with other kinds of features demonstrates the materially totalizing nature of the conflict, forcing a broader archaeological interpretation of the Spanish Civil War that moves beyond isolated sites towards more complex understandings of a dynamic network of violence, power, and politics that shaped and was shaped by the particular landscape of Asturias.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage