Who names the forgotten ones?

DE LA MANO DE VOLVER A LAS TRINCHERAS: UNA ARQUEOLOGÍA DE LA GUERRA CIVIL ESPAÑOLA. ALFREDO GONZÁLEZ RUIBAL (2016) UNA LECTURA CLAVE PARA LA REALIDAD COLOMBIANA

Abstract

This essay arises from the provocations aroused by the thought-provoking reading: “Back to the trenches: an archaeology of the Spanish Civil War” by the Spanish archaeologist and ethno-historian Alfredo González Ruibal. In this way, the ideas expressed here are transversally guided, in turn, by the propositions, findings and methodological challenges, exposed by the author and that serve as an invitation to the reflection of the Colombian archaeological work, which should be less and
less alien to the processes of recent violence in our society, which have left their indelible traces. In our context, archaeology has an important task and commitment in the face of the concealment, invisibilization and erasure of which thousands of Colombians have been victims, finally: to name the forgotten. This essay, in addition to going around the reflections of an anthropology student about a reading that marked her 17 passage through of ‘introduction to archeology’, emphatically proposes to invite to the reading of the mentioned research, for which elements of a review are coined, but maintaining its purpose of generating reflections and future discussion, about the place of the archaeological work in a country like ours. In this sense, the question that heads the essay, is nothing more than a methodological provocation to archaeology and its
predominant place, in front of the exacerbated experiences of violence and death that humans live in different contexts and what is reported and evidenced about these experiences. González Ruibal demonstrates that archaeology is able to name the subjects that have been omitted from the official communications and the great historical discourses, the question for our country remains open, as well as the provocation of a more vertical commitment to this horizon.