Notebooks and sketchbooks

In addition to the collection of journals written by the Flores family, the archive contains Louis Siret's own notebooks. These small tomes come in a variety of formats, with ruled or drawing paper bound in cloth or oilcloth.Salto de línea In some cases the content is limited to a single subject indicated in the title assigned by Siret, but others cover a variety of topics and have no unifying theme. The Almizaraque and Villaricos booklets are closer to excavation field journals, but the rest are notebooks or sketchbooks. They are not numbered or dated, but the information contained inside indicates that they were probably used between 1887 and 1932.Salto de línea The small booklets entitled "Almizaraque 25 November 1903" and "23 October 1905" are excavation journals. Siret wrote the latter, but in the former his comments are written over notes taken by his colleague at Herrerías, the mining engineer Gabriel Cornard, whom he trained.

Another three notebooks have headings that refer to Cuevas, Parazuelos and Vermeja. The first contains topographical details of sites and situation sketches. The second is a collection of rapid notes, with sketched plans and coordinates charts as well as loose pages with expense accounts. The third is a coverless notebook with drawings of sites, the distances between them and data on graves at Fuente Álamo, Zapata, Rambla de Mulería, El Oficio and El Argar.

The remainder contain notes on a wide variety of subjects, from artefact measurements and observations on a specific site to rough sketches and detailed drawings of objects found. These are journals in which Louis Siret jotted down anything that caught his attention or seemed relevant to his research, notes taken at excavation sites or during his travels, as well as landscapes, portraits and drawings of exhibits at the museums he visited or which he read about in some publication.