Archaeological Evidence of Gender Differences in Violent Repression

Abstract

This article discusses women who were either executed by military firing squad or killed extrajudicially during the Spanish Civil War and the Franocist dictatorship, based on evidence from the scientific exhumation of common graves in the twenty-first century. The evidence sheds light on an aspect of Francoist repression that previously has received little attention from scholars and for which few written sources are available, in contrast to executions and killings of men. Archaeological and forensic studies have documented the circumstances of how the women in the graves died, revealing differences between military executions and how extrajudicial killings were conducted. A comparison with findings from male remains found in common graves reveals gendered differences in materiality and in how victims were treated before, during and after death.