This article addresses the concurrent processes of the scientific and affective identification of human remains, resulting from the excavation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War. Affective identification refers to the reconstruction of locally meaningful identities, recognition amongst the living of affective bonds with the dead, and the emotions of mourning elicited in this process. Drawing on fieldwork in two rural communities in the Burgos region of Spain, it follows the exhumation of mass graves containing the human remains of local Republican civilians, victims of extrajudicial killings during the Spanish Civil War. The long time lapse between these deaths and current exhumations place these events on the boundaries of living memory, creating challenges for the investigative process. Widespread experiences of political repression during Spain’s dictatorship have resulted in a fractured transmission of memories of the dead, making the question of affective and familial bonds with the dead more complex for these communities.

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This contribution will consider how the practice of archaeology ‘brings a public into being’. Drawing on examples of the excavation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and the First World War, particularly those cases resulting from activism on the part of memory campaign groups, this paper considers how the act of excavation can serve as a catalyst for members of the public to coalesce and deliberate the complex and far-reaching questions associated with the post-mortem treatment and commemoration of the dead. The necessity to fulfil the aims of particular constituencies, such as the relatives of the dead, or the need to maintain a position of impartiality, may militate against the archaeologist's full intellectual engagement with these questions, resulting in the archaeologist's role being defined primarily by their technical or practical contribution. The concept of the issue network is explored as a way to understand the formation of memory campaigns and the archaeologist's relationship with the public. The idea of the network underlines the potential for the archaeologist to make an intellectual contribution that develops and democratizes the debate surrounding an excavation, even if their position is contested, and so bring a wider public into being.

SUMMARY: The richness of post-medieval mortuary archaeology is explored through

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