Salvatore Garfi

This book is an archaeological exploration of a conflict landscape encountered by the volunteers of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. A great deal is known about the Brigades in terms of inter-world war geopolitics, their history and make-up. But less is known about the materiality of the landscapes in which they lived, fought, and died.

The Spanish Civil War was a relatively static conflict. As in the First World War, it consisted of entrenched Republican government lines facing similarly entrenched Nationalist (rebel) lines, and these ran north to south across Spain. Fighting was intermittent, so the front line soldiers had to settle in, and make what was an attritional war-scape, a place to live in and survive. This research examines one such war-scape as a place of ‘settlement’, where soldiers lived their daily lives as well as confronting the rigours of war – and these were the volunteers of the International Brigades, both foreign and Spanish, who occupied a section of lines southeast of Zaragoza in Aragón in 1937 and 1938.
This research draws, not only on the techniques of landscape archaeology, but also on the writings of international volunteers in Spain – in particular, George Orwell – and it incorporates historical photography as a uniquely analytical, archaeological resource.

When Spain gave up its colony of Spanish Sahara (Western Sahara) in 1975, it was annexed by Morocco and Mauritania. A sixteen year war ensued leaving the country divided between Morocco and the Polisario Front. This unresolved conflict has left indelible scars on the landscape, mainly battlescapes made up of numerous field fortifications littered with the detritus of war, and ‘the berm’, a succession of fortified earth and stone walls constructed by Morocco between 1981 and 1987, partitioning what was a pastoral desert landscape and excluding pro-independence Saharawis, from the western three-quarters of their country.

My research aims to explore how this desert landscape has been transformed by the war and, how the Saharawi people are actively re-appropriating their land. This will be done by looking at the landscape at three levels of resolution. The broadest, or macro level, will chart the growth and spread of the berm, illustrating the extent of Moroccan colonial control and the exclusion of Saharawis within and outside the territory. The middle level will explore the militarization of a specific settlement – Tifariti - which was fought over during the war, and is now a location for an annual art festival. The third, or micro level, will look at the land art that has been created as a result of the art festival, and which is in now a new strata of contemporary archaeology overlying the extensive prehistoric archaeology in the region.

A great number of national barriers are at this very moment being raised around the globe, with countries adopting siege mentalities with their neighbours. This paper will explore how archaeology can help us understand this contemporary phenomena of exclusion and conflict.

"Spain colonised Western Sahara in 1884. but any Spanish sense of place in the territory was limited until the French ‘pacified’ the region in 1934, and the colony was girdled by French and Spanish forts. Spain ceded the colony to Morocco and Mauritania in 1975, and Spain’s disarticulated outposts were replaced by a matrix of earth and stone defensive walls (berms), constructed by the new colonizing power, Morocco, in its bid to secure the territory from nationalist Polisario fighters.

Viewing these defences, and other similar constructions in other parts of the world, through aerial photography and Google Earth, has inspired artists to confront the realities of modern conflict on the ground, through land art and installations, and through the aerial recording of these ‘traces and ruptures’ - surgical scars on the earth’s surface. It is this ‘calamitous actuality’ of colonialism and conflict which will be explored in this paper."

A great deal is known about the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War (SCW) in terms of inter-world war
geopolitics, their history and make-up, but little is known about the materiality of the landscapes in which they lived, fought, and
died. This paper, based on fieldwork carried out by the International Brigadॸ Archaeoloॽ Project (IBAP) in Spain, in 2014 and
2015, aims to present examples of that materiality through landscape archaeology, and through the experiences of foreign volunteers on the project, some of which were related to International Brigaders. IBAP’s fieldwork took place southeast of Zaragoza
around the iconic Civil War ruins of Belchite, and along the opposing Nationalist and Republican entrenchments to the north,
at Mediana de Aragón. The reaction of the town council and people of Belchite to the project is also discussed.