La Bastida in the Louis Siret Cels document collection

The archive of Louis Siret was bought by the Spanish state in 1956 (Ministerial Order of 31 August), although the document collection kept in the National Archaeological Museum also includes the internal study documentation created since its acquisition.Salto de línea The collection does not include any document related with El Campico de Lébor and only five documents belonging to La Bastida, the most interesting of which is the field notebook of the excavation.

Louis Siret knew about the work carried out in La Bastida by the engineer Rogelio de Inchaurrandieta in 1869, having read a summary of them included in a work by Émile de Cartailhac (1886). When Siret began investigating on the site in 1886, 13 tombs excavated by his foreman, Pedro Flores, were found, as is recorded in the notes in the excavation field notebook. These include record of the tombs’ locations and contents, and drawings of the human remains and funerary objects found in two cists and eleven jars. In addition, the notebook’s last two pages contain drawings and notes made by Louis Siret. However, the results cannot have been of interest to him because the excavation only lasted a few days, from 21st November to 9th December. The objects found are now in different Belgian museums and the National Archaeological Museum.

This museum’s archive also includes a typewritten transcription of this notebook which is included in the notes made in the 50s of the 21st century , given the importance of these notebooks and the difficulty of comprehension entailed in the difficult handwriting of Pedro Flores and his children, who helped him in his work. The rest of the La Bastida documents are in the hand of Siret himself: a drawing of ceramic vases, a list of related sites in the different excavation notebooks and another drawing of objects with indication of their tombs included because of his collection being packed for moving to this museum from Almeria.Salto de línea