Appendix 1: The Archaeology Employ the word ‘archaeology’ and a vision is instantly conjured up of Neolithic hand axes, Bronze-Age swords and Roman coins. For this the reason is very simple: in brief, until comparatively recently archaeology was a discipline that focused on the ancient world, the most that could be expected of it otherwise being the occasional foray into the mediaeval period. In Spain in particular, meanwhile, the emergence of archaeology as a modern scientific discipline has arguably been slower than elsewhere: thus, such departments of archaeology as exist are in many instances comparatively recent in their foundation. Put these factors together and add in the fact that one of the legacies of the Franco era was a rooted aversion among the academic community to all things military, and the result is that the archaeology of the Peninsular War is a subject that is very much in its infancy, and this at a time when conflict archaeology in general, and the conflict archaeology of the Napoleonic Wars in particular, have been making steady progress, as witness the discovery and systematic investigation of a mass grave in the Lithuanian city of Vilnius that proved to contain the remains of 2,000 French soldiers who had succumbed to typhus in the wake of the Retreat from Moscow.1 Still worse, the task of achieving similar progress in Spain is one whose path is rendered extremely problematic by a variety of different issues. In the first place, it is only in recent years – the key date is 1985, that year seeing the passage of the crucial Ley de Patrimonio – that the Spanish authorities have woken up to the need to protect sites of historical importance, whilst, if only through ignorance of the detail of the events of 1808–14, even then the limits of what was deemed to be important was in practice inclined to be rather narrowly defined: crudely speaking, whereas Celtiberian hill forts, Roman amphitheatres and Moorish castles were all self-evidently places of historical importance, to the uninitiated a field was but a field even though it might have been the site of some crucial combat, or, for that matter, somewhere where regiment after regiment of soldiers, British, French, Spanish and Portuguese, had bivouacked for the night. In consequence, in the course of the past 20 years, motorways have been driven across at least five of the war’s major battlefields – Talavera, Albuera, Sagunto, Salamanca and Vitoria – seemingly without any attempt at archaeological inves- tigation of any sort, while much of the field of Vitoria, including the site of much of the fiercest fighting, now lies buried under a singularly unattractive industrial estate. Yet, better informed on account of a personal interest in a subject deemed by the vast majority of their compatriots to be so arcane as to be beyond their comprehension, other Spaniards, alas, were ahead of the game, and thus it is that few sites associated with the struggle have been free from the depredations of dozens of freelance collectors of antiquities and amateur historians armed with metal detectors: indeed, it is certain that most of the main battlefields and other areas of interest have over the past 30 years been thoroughly pillaged.2 From all this it follows, first, that only in a very few cases have serious stud- ies been undertaken of particular sites, and, second, that such work as has been carried out has often been less rewarding than might have been expected. That 136 Appendix 1: The Archaeology 137 said, those excavations that have taken place have still yielded much informa- tion of interest. Particularly apposite here, perhaps, is a study that was conducted in respect of the Moorish castle that dominated the city of Jaén. Thus, although much evidence, including, lamentably, the until then very visible remains of the many buildings that were constructed to house the successive garrisons who were stationed in the castle between 1808 and 1814, was lost in the course of the transformation of part of the site into one of Spain’s famous parador hotels in the course of the 1960s, a team from the University of Jaén was able both to chart the series of improvements which, first, the Spaniards and then the French effected in respect of the defences, and, second, to uncover the foundations of various buildings, including a structure that housed a number of officers, the lat- ter being identified by reference to the detailed plans of the site drawn up in the course of the French occupation.3 Being more prone to disappearing from the landscape because of erosion or the spread of vegetation, field fortifications are still more vulnerable than castles and other such structures – one thinks here of such detached works as the fort of San Cristóbal at Badajoz or the spectacular fort of Santa Engracia at Pancorbo – but only in a few cases have steps been taken to identify and conserve the physical remains.4 On the Isla de León, for example, an alert member of staff of the local museum quite by chance spotted traces of a work known as the Lacy Redoubt in the wake of a high tide that washed away the topmost layer of sand from a beach, whilst the remains of another battery have been identified by the government of the city of San Fernando as a site that should be protected and, if possible, subjected to investigation, also very inter- esting being the efforts of local enthusiasts to chart what remains of a chain of batteries and other fortified posts that guarded the southern entrance to the Río de Sancti Petri.5 Yet even where sites have been identified, very few have been made the subject of excavations, let alone restored to some semblance of their original condition – an exception in the latter case is constituted by various works belonging to the Lines of Torres Vedras, while at least one ‘dig’ has taken place on the site of the citadel constructed by the French to overawe Madrid in what is today the Parque del Retiro6 – archaeological investigations having for the most part only been initiated as a prelude to or consequence of interventions in the built environment, a good example here concerning the case of Zaragoza. Thus, internal alterations in the castle of the Aljafería in 1986 led to the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of some 200 men, women and children, all of them victims either of the sieges of 1808–1809 or the privations of the years that followed, who had been interred beneath the floor of the castle’s chapel, other items that were recovered including copious quantities of coins, buttons, badges and buckles, and even the occasional fragment of headgear and uniform.7 As for sites other than those concerning the proverbial ‘sharp end of war’, to the authors’ best knowledge the only one that has ever been looked at is the intern- ment camp that was established on the island of Cabrera to house the 20,000 French prisoners taken by the Spaniards at the battle of Bailén, the investigations that were carried out revealing the remains of a number of stone huts as well as such items as spoons, plates, drinking vessels and cooking utensils.8 The picture, then, is very patchy: interest in the subject is growing, while the local authorities have become rather more aware of their responsibilities towards the physical remains left behind by the Peninsular War, but only in relatively few cases have these last been systematically investigated, while from time to time 138 Appendix 1: The Archaeology cases come to light that amount to little more than vandalism, as, for example, in Astorga where a recent visit to the city led to the discovery that the northern walls of the cathedral had just been restored so as to obliterate all trace of the sustained pounding that they received at the hands of French artillery in the course of the siege of 1810. It is then pleasant to report that, setting aside the important excavation that, as already noted, took place following the discovery of a mass grave that had served the various hospitals set up by the French in the period 1808–1812, the castle of Burgos has been the subject of not one ‘dig’ but three. Of these the first was initiated in 1993 following the decision of the city authorities to reconstruct the castle – at that point still a wasteland of rubble and brambles – marked only by a stretch of wall crowned by few stubby drum towers that had been erected in the Franquist era in an attempt to delineate the site – and embellish the area with a car park, play area and other tourist facilities, the area chosen for this second part of the project roughly corresponding with the place d’armes enclosed by the innermost tier of ramparts erected by the French, or, to put it another way, the site of the basilica of Santa María la Blanca. Given these objectives, it was logical that operations should have fallen into two main parts, namely the investigation of the remains of the castle and the investigation of the place d’armes. Beginning with the former, clearing the ground of surface rubble and the dense scrub that covered large parts of it soon uncov- ered the outline of many of the buildings constructed to house the garrison in the Isabelline era, together with many traces of the mediaeval castle, and, more particularly, the great fire of 1736 (this last in the form of a layer of ash and other carbonised deposits buried at a depth of 30–60 centimetres from the sur- face: given the fact that such layers were discovered in various parts of the site, it may be that at least some of them may relate to the explosion of 1812, the fire having affected the royal palace only).