064: Dig the Spanish Civil War & the medieval town of Belchite, Spain
Staff
Alfonso Fanjul Peraza (Oviedo. Spain - 1975)
A graduate in History (University of Oviedo, 2001) with a degree and a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Prehistory (University of Salamanca, 2006), he holds a PhD in Archaeology from the Autonomous University of Madrid (2016) with a thesis on the Astures and hillfort settlement in Asturias. In 2016 he received the Fierro Botas Prize for Asturian Cultural Research for his study on the origins and evolution of Faro pottery. He is currently affiliated with Kiel University (Germany), as a member of the European Paleogenetics Research Group at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology.
Since 2024 he has directed the Orígenes project of Oviedo City Council, devoted to the study and promotion of the municipality's historical heritage. He is President of the Faro Pottery Association, heads the archaeological consultancy ARQUEONORTE and has chaired the Spanish Association of Military Archaeology since 2019. He is the author of ten books on archaeology and history, among them Fíbulas. Manual de broches prehistóricos de la Península Ibérica (2025), Que la tierra te sea leve. Ritos funerarios en España a través de los tiempos (2022) and Los astures. Un pueblo céltico del Noroeste Peninsular (2019).
He has directed the archaeological work at Belchite (Zaragoza) since 2021, when the first excavations ever authorized in the ruins of the town incorporated the remains of the 1937 battle into the existing visitor routes. Those excavations revealed that Belchite was already inhabited in Roman times and, in 2024, led to the discovery of the medieval synagogue, potentially one of the best preserved in Spain. Since then his team has focused on the excavation of the synagogue in the Jewish quarter while continuing to document and study the remains of the Spanish Civil War.
Fernando Contreras Rodrigo (Lérida. Spain - 1967)
A graduate in History specializing in Classical Archaeology (Autonomous University of Barcelona), he is the Director and Manager of the Sanisera Archaeology Institute, an international organization that has been developing archaeological training courses for over 30 years at the Sanisera archaeological site (Menorca, Balearic Islands, Spain). Since 1993, he has also carried out archaeological research, conservation, and heritage management projects in Spain, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates. Since 2015, he has led annual excavation and restoration missions for the Government of Dubai. He is the author of more than thirty publications and reports. He is proficient in standard archaeological fieldwork technologies, including ArcGIS, AutoCAD, GPS data capture, drone and total station aerial photography, databases, photogrammetry, and archaeological illustration. He has experience leading multidisciplinary and multicultural teams of up to 25 people, as well as preparing budgets, tenders, grant applications, project proposals, and technical reports. He also designs and develops database software for the management of archaeological heritage, a line of work that he started with his B.O.I.R.A. system (Organizational Base of Information of the Archaeological Register) and which he is now expanding with the support of artificial intelligence.
