Wednesday, August 18

i am fascinated by things like this.

i wanted to be an archaeologist. i should have been.


Civil war Discovery in East Georgia By Rickey Bevington
media link Updated: 11 hours ago

Millen, Ga. — Archeologists have made a major Civil War discovery in east Georgia.The find launches what’s expected to be a decades-long unveiling of a lost Union prison camp.Confederate forces hastily evacuated Camp Lawton in rural Millen, Georgia in late 1864 as Federal forces pushed deeper into Georgia.

After that, the 42-acre stockade southeast of Atlanta was practically forgotten. That’s until this past winter when Dr. Sue Moore and her team of archeologist's with Georgia Southern University started doing basic shovel tests of earth:

"We starting turning up buttons and pipes and buckles and just an enormous amount of stuff and were just totally, totally flabbergasted and astounded by this."

With less than 1% of the site excavated, there could be untold numbers of untouched artifacts. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which owns part of the land, has installed security fencing, motion detectors and cameras to protect the site.

All artifact photo credits: Amanda L. Morrow, Georgia Southern University

1 comment:

Gail said...

I read about this find in the AJC. One of my great grandfathers was a Confederate chaplain in Savannah so it really struck a note with me. Plus there is a Confederate campsite not far from my house where you can still see the breastworks. Interestingly enough, the camp was on the old Doc Holliday homeplace-yep, he was a native of Griffin.