Paper short abstract:

This paper considers processes of forensic identification and ‘affective identification’, the reconstruction of locally meaningful identities and familial bonds in the excavation of mass graves of the Spanish Civil War, and how bodies, objects and photographs mediate these forms of identification.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the points of convergence and tension between the process of forensic identification of human remains and the concurrent process of 'affective identification', meaning the reconstruction of locally meaningful identities, recognition of familial bonds amongst the living descendants of the dead, and the emotions of mourning elicited in this process. This paper draws on field work in two rural communities in the Burgos region of Spain as they undergo the exhumation of mass graves containing the human remains of local Republican civilians, victims of extrajudicial killings during the Spanish Civil War. The chronology of the Civil War deaths and their subsequent investigations in the present, place these events on the boundaries of living memory, making the question of affective identification more pressing and more complex for these communities.

This paper looks at how the exposure of human remains, the personal possessions encountered in the mass graves, and portrait photographs of the dead mediate the different understandings of 'identity' and 'identification' held by the archaeologists and specialist practitioners investigating the grave, and the wider community of residents and descendants of the dead. In particular it considers how bodies, objects and images of the dead feature in the discourse between expert practitioners and the communities in which they work.