Academic Relations Between Italian and Spanish Archaeologists and Prehistorians, 1916-1936

Spanish knowledge of Italian archaeology goes back to the second half of the nineteenth century, through the dissemination of the reports of major excavations. Scientific analysis leaned towards the study parameters of Classical Art History, although this did not affect the development of an academic body of work based on the Iberian Peninsula’s own archaeological record. Its influence was felt in various ways: in the importance of the study of sites connected with the Roman conquest and rule for Spanish nationalism; in the composition of the first documentary syntheses or bodies of work, such as José Ramón Mélida’s Arqueología Española of 1929; and in the award of grants by the recently founded Junta de Ampliación de Estudios (JAE) (Further Studies Board) for research in Italy. This paper reconstructs the development of academic relationships between Spanish and Italian archaeologists from the private correspondence of Pedro Bosch Gimpera, Luis Pericot and Julio Martínez Santa Olalla, as well as from official documents held in the Archivo General de la Administración (General Government Archive) in Alcalá de Henares and in the General Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Madrid.

fessor of Classical Archaeology at the Central University of Madrid from 1931, replacing Mélida 9 , García y Bellido obtained grants from the JAE and the Royal Academy of History between 1930 and 1935. He worked in Germany in 1930, 1932, 1934 and 1935, but spent most of 1933 in Italy broadening his knowledge of Greco-Roman archaeology and Italian proto-historical cultures. He was in Florence from April to June, analysing collections of Greek pottery, and compiling data that he would use in his studies of the Greek colonization of the Iberian Peninsula. Then, after taking part in an educational Mediterranean cruise in the summer of 1933, which would introduce three generations of Spanish scholars to Italian archaeology (Gracia Alonso and Fullola, 2006), he toured sites in Southern Italy before a long stay in Rome (Blánquez and Pérez, 2004: 19-58).
This educational Mediterranean cruise was organized by the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Madrid's Central University, and supported by the Ministries of State (Foreign Affairs) and of Public Education and Fine Arts, and brought together 190 teachers and students from the universities of Madrid, Barcelona, Salamanca, Seville and Valencia. They took 45 days to visit Malta, Tunis, Egypt, the Holy Land, Crete, Rhodes, Smyrna, Istanbul, Greece, Sicily and part of central Italy. Nearly all of the main representatives of Spanish archaeological research between 1920 and 1950 were on board, with the exception of Bosch Gimpera. Manuel Gómez Moreno 10 , Elías Tormo 11 , Hugo Obermaier 12 , Luís Pericot 13 , José Ferrandis Torres 14 , Enrique Lafuente Ferrari 15 , Cayetano de Mergelina y Luna 16 , Blas Taracena Aguirre 17 and Antonio García y Bellido were among the teachers. And Juan de Mata Carriazo, Martín Almagro Basch 18 , Julio Martínez Santa Olalla 19 , Juan Maluquer de Motes 20 , Carlos Alonso del Real 21 , Encarnación Cabré Herreros 22 , Emilio Camps Cazorla 23 , José María Mañá de Angulo 24 and Felipa Niño Mas 25 , were among the students and recent graduates. The cruise was a unique opportunity for archaeologists and archaeology students to see the main sites and museums of the Classical world. This experience would decisively shape their professional and academic activities after the Spanish Civil War.
After a tour of the eastern Mediterranean and Greece, the ship Ciudad de Cádiz reached Palermo, Sicily, on July 23. The travellers visited the main archaeological sites of the city and then detoured to Syracuse before moving on to Naples on July 25. Here they visited the archaeological museum before going to Pompeii and Herculaneum on July 26, Paestum on July 27 and Rome on July 28. They were introduced to the large-scale excavation techniques used in work at Pompeii, and to the concept of monumental archaeology that was favoured by Mussolini's government.
Consequently the excavation of large archaeological complexes would also become a standard feature of the archaeological research promoted by Spanish governments in the period immediately before and after the Spanish Civil War. Implementation began on June 11, 1936, with the publication of the Plan for Works, Excavations and Acquisition of Buildings and Land Destined for Monuments of National Artistic Heritage. With a budget of 6,816,927 pesetas, this plan had been put before Parliament by the Minister of Public Education and Fine Arts, Marcelino Domingo, and prioritized the sites of Itálica, Clunia and Medina Azahara. In 1940, after the end of the Spanish Civil War, the General Commissariat of Archaeological Excavations of Franco's Ministry of Education and Science presented its first plan of archaeological action, which advocated funding for work at the three sites, Itálica, Clunia and Medina Azahara, as well as at the sites of La Alcudia, Azaila, Mérida, Numancia, Sagunto and Ampurias. In spite of the political differences with its predecessors the Franco regime maintained the policy of supporting archaeological research.

The IVth International Congress of Classical Archaeology
Bosch was in frequent contact with his Italian colleagues. Count Francesco Pellati invited him to the conference on the history of Cyrenaica held in 1927, although in the end he was unable to attend due to administrative problems with the Ministry of State. However, he did take part in the International Congress of Etruscan Studies held in Florence in 1928, and attended the meeting on the archaeology of the island of Rhodes in the same year. At the former, one of the characteristics of Bosch's academic personality was clearly demonstrated: his definition of a position on a question and then the defence of it at all costs, riding roughshod over any arguments of the opposition. At this conference Italian researchers, led by Ugo Antonelli, put forward their theses in defence of the Italian ethnicity of the Etruscans in order to ingratiate themselves with Fascist authorities and obtain funds to continue their research. Bosch and other researchers such as Axel Boethius defended the opposite position, that the Etruscans were of Lydian origin. They based their arguments on the evidence in Classical texts, a position characteristic of the German historical school in which they had both been educated. Like Wilhelm Unverzagt they were disdainful of the Fascist paraphernalia and the patriotic interventions of the conference speakers, and along with Boethius, Bosch refused to use the term 'Etruscan-Italian' to refer to pre-Roman communities on the Italian peninsula.
Nevertheless, and in spite of all of the politics, the fact is that they were wrong. Archaeological research was beginning to find evidence of continuity in the sequences of occupation between different stages of Villanovian and Lacial cultures and the Etruscan levels, without any rupture or contribution by external populations. This confirmed the indigenist thesis at the expense of the migrationist one, which attempted to assign the origins of Etruscans and Romans to the communities of Asia Minor. After visiting the Pigorini museum, Bosch began corresponding with Antonelli, among others, 26 concerning a series of artefacts from a pit tomb near the Cucumella Tumulus at Vulci, which he wanted to compare with some Spanish material. In addition he began to correspond with Neppi Modona, with whom he was to continue 27 to exchange both his publications and those of his students, Alberto del Castillo and Luis Pericot, for the series, Studi Etruschi 28 , which he wanted for the Prehistory Seminar at the University of Barcelona.
After the Etruscan conference, Bosch undertook a tour of the Aegean, leaving from Brindisi and visiting Patras, Corinth, Athens, Smyrna, Patmos and Cos before reaching Rhodes. Back in Rome, Bosch met with Francesco Pellati and Ettore Pais to confirm Italian support for the negotiations to hold the IVth International Congress of Classical Archaeology in Barcelona in the following year, a meeting he had begun to organise in Brussels five years earlier. The interest of the Italians grew as the months passed, especially Pellati's, and in January 1929 he congratulated Bosch for having gained the support of the Spanish government for the congress. Pellati was convinced that the Barcelona meeting would be successful due to the presence in the organising committee of Mélida and Obermaier, and of Bosch himself. Pellati also suggested a date for the second fortnight of September which was accepted. Pellati provided information and documents on how the third congress in Rome (some years earlier) had been set up, along with the specific reasons that prevented the followup conference in Algiers, due mainly to the outbreak of the First World War. He believed that the proposal for the conference in Spain linked up perfectly with the lecture series begun in Athens, and continued in Cairo before the Rome meeting. 29 Because of the lack of news, Pellati asked for confirmation at the end of April 1929 that the congress would take place. 30 By the start of July all of the Italian researchers had received the conference documents 31 and had started to send their letters of acceptance to Bosch, along with their lecture titles. Some, like Ugo Rellini, 32 suggested that the organisers request that official delegations be sent, a measure that had already been discussed by the time the Ministry of State sent out information on the conference to other European governments. Pellati and Antonio Taramelli organised the Italian delegation under the aegis of the Minister of Public Education 33 . Initially the delegation was to comprise these two scholars and Paolo Orsi, Pericle Ducati and Pietro Romanelli, 34 although some of these were not all able, or in some cases not particularly keen, to participate. 35 44 Bosch also relied on the Italian researchers' participation in the 'Foreign Correspondence Committee', which had to persuade the international community of the value of the work of the organising committee, the quality of Spanish research and the appropriateness of holding the meeting in Barcelona. The Spanish press noted the calibre of the foreign researchers expected to be present in Barcelona, and reported on the members of the committee, The interest of the Italian archaeologists and researchers was logical, given the programme. Divided into twelve sections, research into the Classical world and Latin culture predominated, and only four sections diverged from this main subject. These were Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology (I), Eastern Archaeology (II), Pre-Hellenic Archaeology (III) and Organization of Archaeological Research (XII). The eight other sections reflected the main themes: Italian and Etruscan Archaeology (IV), Spanish Archaeology (V), History of Classical Art (VI), Greek and Roman Antiquities (VII), Epigraphy, Papyrology and Numismatics (VIII), Mythology and History of Religions (IX), Ancient Topography (X) and Christian Archaeology (XI).
The Barcelona Congress, held from September 23 to 29, 1929, was an overwhelming success. Bosch, as organiser, had to overcome many obstacles due to the doubts of the more nationalist sectors of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, who regarded the meeting as yet another example of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship's attempts to create Spanishnationalist uniformity. However, Rodenwaldt expressed the opinion of many of those present when he pointed out, during the opening session in the Aula Magna of the University of Barcelona, that the objective of the German delegation was not only to honour the scientific voyages of Alexander von Humboldt, but also to confirm the excellence of archaeological research in Spain, in reference to the international impact of the work of Bosch and Obermaier 46 47 Others, such as the Italians Neppi 48 , Rellini 49 , Agostino Gemelli 50 , Alfonso Bartoli 51 and Serafino Ricci 52 could not attend, but supported the congress 53 . Aristide Calderini even requested that the documents of the conference's working groups be included in the journal Aevum, published by the Faculty of Letters of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan 54 .
During the opening ceremony on September 23, Taramelli, from the Presidential table, told participants how the congress had allowed him to fulfil his dream of getting to know Spain. He gave the Italian Government's official greeting and 'predicted that the congress's tasks are the prelude to that society of intelligence and the future. He said it was necessary to achieve serenity by means of these festivals of thought that are festivals of the heart and recalled the fraternity of Spain and Italy' 55 58 , and to the excavations at Ampurias (in Catalan Empúries, a Greek and Roman town site on the coast). These all had a significant impact on participants, especially the tour of Ampurias. Although Bosch had been Director of the Archaeological Research Service of the IEC since 1915, he had hardly intervened at all in the excavations. Emilio Gandía had directed the fieldwork, while the scientific side had been supervised by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, who refused to take part in the congress' sessions for political reasons. This meant that Bosch had to explain the site, and ironically, later he would take charge of it, from 1935 until the Civil War. Durrbach and Taramelli thanked the organization and Bosch for all of their attentiveness during the visit to Ampurias. The Italians succeeded in moving Gandía by composing and reciting a poem praising his work at the excavations. 59 Back in the Aula Magna of the university, Taramelli again represented the Italians at the September 29 closure of the congress 60 , at which the speakers not only congratulated each other on the success of the sessions, but also, on Durrbach's proposal, agreed to hold the Vth Congress in Algiers during the following year to commemorate the centenary of Morocco's French conquest. However, undoubtedly the most important conclusion, in terms of international relations, was the appointment of Mélida and Bosch as coordinators of a future international committee to organise new meetings 61  Bosch's prestige in Italy as a central figure in Iberian archaeology was confirmed over and above the limits of his research. As early as 1929, he was invited to take part in the meeting, held by the Human Palaeontology Section of the Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze 68 , and to contribute articles and news on archaeological activity in Spain to the Bolletino de la Associazione Internazionale degli Studi Mediterranei (AIM) 69 . Guido Calza, who met Bosch during the Algiers congress, invited him on behalf of the President of the AIM, Count Constantini, to give a lecture in Rome at the start of 1931, as part of a cycle of talks on Mediterranean archaeology. Bosch accepted the invitation, proposing various lecture subjects such as: 'Cultural relationships and problems of chronology in the Mediterranean in the Neolithic period' and 'Problems of post-Mycenaean Mediterranean ethnology', 70 although due to internal problems within the AIM he was never able to deliver the lectures in person 71 . In April 1931 Romanelli even asked him to contribute to the news section of the Bollettino del Museo dell'Impero Romano with the most relevant information on Spanish research into Roman monuments and sites, 72 a subject that Bosch had never worked on. In 1929 Bosch published two articles in Italian journals: 'Problemi della colonizzazione greca in Spagna' in Historia and 'Le relazioni mediterranee postmicenee ed il problema etrusco' in Studi Etruschi, which reaffirmed his prestige. He was to maintain this prestige, even during the Spanish Civil War, among Italian researchers who were not ideologically committed to Fascism, to the chagrin of Martínez Santa Olalla, who sought to spread the political arguments of the Franco side among the professional elites of European archaeology 73 .

From Algiers to Berne
At the beginning of 1929, Bosch and Obermaier attended the opening of the archaeological museums of Berlin (Gracia Alonso, 2011: 237-239). Here they discussed, with Lantier, Unverzagt and Gerhard Bersu, the organisation of a specific congress on prehistory, as distinct from the congresses on anthropology and archaeology. This discussion continued in September in Barcelona, when Bosch, Lantier, Obermaier and Rodenwaldt examined the idea in greater detail. They composed a draft call for papers for the prehistory congress, although the definitive decision to hold it was postponed until they met again in Algiers at the Vth International Congress of Classical Archaeology. In Algiers Bosch and Obermaier -members of the official Spanish delegation along with Mergelina and Taracenaand Unverzagt and Weygand (in Lantier's absence) 74 75 The publication in 1932 of Bosch's Etnología de la Península Ibérica had considerable repercussions in Italy. In an analysis that went beyond professional courtesy, Ettore Pais wrote: 'I admire the breadth of your conclusions. I saw with the greatest pleasure the appropriateness of the comparisons you draw with other countries. You have dealt with the problem not from the perspective of a specialist, but of someone who is deeply aware of all historical, archaeological and ethnographic problems and is able to tackle them in general terms ... I will review your book in the journal Historia'. 76 However, Bosch barely quoted Italian researchers, only Taramelli with his work on Sardinia, and Ettore Pais on various facets of the history of Rome and pre-Roman communities, while he also reissued old research by L. Garofalo on the Iberians in southern Gaul. This disregard is surprising, given his broad knowledge of Italian bibliography, as he gave preference to French and German authors and his own works on Italian themes.
In comparison, Hugo Obermaier's El hombre fósil, whose revised second edition of 1925 replaced the 1916 edition, included many references to prehistoric research in Italy. In the chapters on the Palaeolithic, Obermaier used works by A. Mochi, G.A. Colini, G. Bellucci, R. Battaglia and Ugo Rellini, and in the Palaeoanthropology section he quoted studies by G. Sergi and E. Grazzini. Obermaier showed that he knew the subject in depth, although he also gave more space to French and German scientific studies. While Bosch and Obermaier knew of the research through publications, García y Bellido, on the other hand, had lived in Italy for almost a year in 1933. So it is no surprise that in Los hallazgos griegos en España, published in 1936, García y Bellido, demonstrated his profound knowledge of the materials in Italian museums and of Italian and German bibliography, with frequent quotes from Buonamici, Guido Libertini, Spinazzola, Milani, Marconi, Ducati, E. Brizzio, Orsi, Gabrici and Rellini, and a much wider range of sources than in Bosch and Obermaier's books.
Another Spanish researcher, Julio Martínez Santa Olalla also maintained strong links with Italy. When he was a lecturer in Spanish at the University of Bonn (1927)(1928)(1929)(1930)(1931), he befriended the linguist Vittorio Bertoldi, whom he invited to contribute to the Anuario de Prehistoria Madrileña 77 and with whom he maintained a scientific correspondence for years 78 . He also corresponded with Alfredo Bruchi, his contact in the Standing Committee for Etruria 79

From London to the Civil War
It was decided in 1932 at the Berne Congress that the first meeting of the CISPP should be held in London. Myres and Bosch worked together on the lists of the members of the Committee of Honour, the Standing Council and the National Secretariats 84 and Bosch and Obermaier attended the meeting as Spain's official representatives 85 . Although Bosch eventually took a lesser role within the CISPP, his earlier work was recognized with his appointment to the commission to organise a conference for the Study of the Prehistory of the Western Mediterranean, to take place in autumn of 1935, in Barcelona.
But the convening of this Barcelona meeting was badly affected by political developments. After the uprising of the Catalan government, the Generalitat, against the Government of the Republic on October 6, 1934, Bosch was imprisoned, and accused of supporting military rebellion. Although he was released in December (Gracia Alonso, 2011: 275-285), his reputation was severely damaged, especially among researchers from those countries with Totalitarian regimes, and from others like Great Britain, who thought that Catalonia's secessionist drift was dangerous. Thus, when the conference opened on September 10, 1935, it was not only without most of the Spanish delegates, such as Obermaier, Taracena and Emeterio Cuadrado 86  In the session of January 8, 1941, Count Francesco Pellati was one of its speakers. 110 As General Commissar for Archaeological Excavations, Martínez Santa Olalla controlled Spanish relations with Italy until the fall of the Mussolini regime. In February 1940 he went to Rome to take part in the twelfth cycle of talks De Gli Studi Romani nel Mondo 111 , giving a lecture on 'Roman-Hispanic Archaeology' in the Borromini Oratory, attended by the Spanish ambassador, Pedro García Conde. His Roman visit included a thorough tour of the excavations of the Imperial Forums, part of the work undertaken by the Mussolini government to glorify the city in the runup to the 1942 Universal Exhibition 112 , and radio talks on the 'Hispanicization of Rome' 113 broadcast on Radio Roma. In both talks, Martínez Santa Olalla focused on the importance of the relationships between Hispania and Rome and the predominant role of the former in the maturation, development and defence of the Roman Empire. 114 At the end of World War II, contacts between Spain and Italy were rapidly re-established. '... from a scientific point of view, the presence of Spain at the Congress is of undoubted interest, as it will be the occasion to reopen relationships that the past and present circumstances of the world impede '. 115 According to the report sent to the Department of Cultural Relations by the Consul of Spain in Genoa, on July 3, 1947, the success that accompanied Taracena's attendance '... has brought to the attention of those at the Congress the Archaeology publications of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) previously sent to the "Istituto di Studi Liguri", which were unknown to the French and almost all the Italians, has obtained from some of these professors contributions for our journals and has informed everyone of the Spanish bibliography in the speciality subsequent to 1940, of which they knew nothing'. 116 In fact, the invitation to Almagro was in response to an earlier invitation to Lamboglia to take part in the 1st International Archaeology Course at Ampurias, held from August 25 to September 15 that same year, under the direction of Almagro himself and Pericot. The courses at Ampurias would be the basis for Spanish-Italian collaboration during the early years of Francoism. Massimo Pallotino (1948), Luigi Bernabò Brea (1950), Aldo Crivelli (1948), Romanelli (1949) and Graziosi (1950Graziosi ( -1951, among others, took part in them (Gracia Alonso, 2009: 353-365; 2012).

Conclusion
Contacts between Spanish and Italian archaeologists and prehistorians during the first half of the twentieth century clearly reflect the development of two parallel schools of thought in archaeological research in Europe. In Spain, the ideas of the French, British and German liberals of the inter-war period gradually gave way to Italian influences based on the definition of archaeology that Fascism imposed on Italy between 1923 and 1943. The development of monumentalist archaeology in Spain, which began in the mid-1920s with the excavations of Mérida and Hispalis under Mélida, and in Ampurias (Empúries) with the work of Puig i Cadafalch, was supported by nationalist sentiments eager to recover tangible proof of the past.
The reaffirmation of Spanish culture -and of Catalan culture as well -was rooted in the assertion of its Classical origins, of its clear debts to ancient Greece and Rome. During the Spanish Civil War, and then once it was in power, the Franco regime exploited the political capital that this concept of Spain's past provided. The idea of empire, strong central leadership, and political and linguistic unity, in stark opposition to the territorial, linguistic and cultural diversity endorsed by the Republic of 1931 to 1936, found perfect expression in the monumentalist approach to archaeology centred on the Roman Era, but repackaged as a Hispano-Roman recreation of the essence of Latin culture. For the regime, the emperors and poets born in Hispania were not 'Romans', but 'Hispanic' or 'Spanish'. This Fascist-inspired approach to archaeology, whose influence would still be felt in Spain as late as the mid-1970s, was characterized by an unquestioning positivism that developed in the context of the country's political isolation after the end of World War II. As a result, and for almost two decades, Spanish and European archaeology went their separate ways.
The process of academic internationalization championed by Bosch Gimpera and Obermaier culminated in the organization of the International Congresses of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences and the meetings in Barcelona in 1929 and Berne in 1932. However, the turbulent events of the middle of the twentieth century brought it to an abrupt end, making way for the influence of Italian Fascist archaeology, exemplified by the contacts set up by García y Bellido, Taracena and Almagro after the Spanish Civil War, whose philosophy would dominate Spanish archaeological research during the Francoist period.