Archaeology and Memory of the Concentration Camps

Project HELP’s International Seminar

Archaeology and Memory of the Concentration Camps

October 26th and 27th, in Barrancos

International Seminar

26-27/10/2024

From 9:30 am

Centro Interpretativo do Barranquenho

Rua Dona Maria das Dores Fialho Garcia, 4, 7230-010 Barrancos, Portugal

organisation

Xurxo Ayán Vila (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST) and Dulce Simões (INET-md – NOVA FCSH)

To share experiences and inspire the archaeological intervention planned for the first half of 2025 are the goals of project HELP’s International Seminar, ‘Archaeology and Memory of the Concentration Camps’, taking place in Barrancos, Alentejo on October 26^th and 27^th, bringing together renowned specialists in the field of concentration camp archaeology from Brazil, Portugal, Spain and Uruguay.

Aimed not only at specialists and the local community but all interested parties, the seminar will be held at the Centro Interpretativo do Barranquenho (interpretation centre for the Barrancos local language), with a dinner on Saturday at Sociedade Recreativa Artística Barranquense, with ‘cante alentejano’, the polyphonic singing from Alentejo declared by UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and poetry.

On Sunday afternoon, participants will visit Herdade da Coitadinha and have a ‘lanche-convívio’. Herdade da Coitadinha housed one of the two refugee camps in Barrancos studied by project ‘HELP – Heritage, Environment, Liberty and People. Archaeology of the Spanish refugee camps in Barrancos, Alentejo (1936)’, the other being As Russianas.

The opening session will be hosted by the Mayor of Barrancos, Leonel Rodrigues, Councillor for Culture Cláudia Costa, EDIA director-coordinator Diogo Nascimento and project PI Xurxo Ayán Vila (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST). Speakers for the two-day meeting include, besides Xurxo and co-PI Dulce Simões (INET-md – NOVA FCSH), in alphabetical order:

Angélica Vedana, CRIA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST researcher.
Candela Martínez Barrio, archaeologist at Cabildo de Gran Canaria (Gran Canaria Island Council), Spain; headed numerous exhumations of Francoism victims, namely at the concentration camp in Castuera (Badajoz, Spain).
Carlos Piriz, historian, associate professor of Contemporary History, Universidad de Cádiz, Spain.
Felipe Mejía, director of the Albatera concentration camp archaeological project (Alicante, Spain).
Luis Antonio Ruiz Casero, historian, researcher at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, Grupo de Investigación Complutense de la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo.
Márcia Hattóri, archaeologist, researcher at Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain.
Pedro Fermín Maguire, archaeologist, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brasil).
Tânia Casimiro, Archaeology professor at NOVA FCSH, HTC – NOVA FCSH researcher.

Full programme

FREE ADMISSION (subject to room capacity)

Collaborating organisations:

Barrancos Municipality, Barrancos Municipal Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, EDIA – Empresa de Desenvolvimento e Infra-estruturas do Alqueva, Noudar Nature Park.

Project HELP 5 main objectives:

To get closer to the materiality of the 1936 Republican refugee camps in Barrancos (Portugal/ Baixo Alentejo), in order to reconstruct the daily life and living conditions of their occupants, based on the cross-referencing of archaeological documentation with oral testimonies and archive documents.
To carry out an exhaustive archaeological study of this border landscape in order to reconstruct its evolution throughout the historical process, taking into account that an approach focused on ecology and the environment currently prevails, in line with its promotion as a natural park. The team’s intention is to produce a rigorous report that recovers its status as a ‘place of memory’.
To engage the collective imagination of the local communities by analysing the memory preserved among the new generations (Portuguese and Spanish) and integrating the populations in the research process itself (citizen participation.
By aiming to contribute to the local and sustainable development of this depressed rural area of Baixo Alentejo, project HELP will serve as the basis for new models of promoting the region, such as ‘memory tourism’. Linking the traumatic past to the present, at a time marked by new refugee flows and the rise of neo-fascism.
Project HELP has a clear educational nature, as an instrument for promoting human rights and peace education, as it aims to recover the values of solidarity and cross-border hospitality that are so necessary for the future.