For want of a nail? Proxies for analysing POW and guard access to supplies at a Confederate prison camp

ABSTRACT

Camp Lawton is a Confederate camp for Union PoWs in Georgia, USA. Built in 1864, inhabited for six weeks, and abandoned in advance of Sherman’s march to the sea, it is the focus of an ongoing research project. One of the key questions, yet unresolved, concerning Civil War POW camps is the lack of PoW access to essential supplies. Historical debates rage over the intentionality of these depravations, with a recurring argument asserting a universal privation, for guards and PoWS. The archaeology of internment camps can end this debate. Presented here are interpretations from recent fieldwork via an unlikely source: the machine-cut nail, analysed as a proxy in the absence of traditional evidence of subsistence and supply. Present in large numbers in PoW and guard areas, but clearly not architectural, this paper explores a narrative where nails, and the purpose for which they were put to, were not wanting.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil War
• pows
• supplies
• nails
• material Culture
• Georgia
• prisoners of War

Acknowledgments

Thanks to GADNR and USFWS for their continual support, as well as my predecessor Lance Greene, project director 2012-15. Thanks to my graduate students, Zach Dirnberger, Rhianna Bennett, and Colin Partridge, who were invaluable as field supervisors. Thanks to my colleague, Jared Wood, for the loan of his field school students and his own time for mitigation work in 2018. And thanks to my co-author and grad student, Emily Jones for her tireless and enthusiastic work in measuring and analysing hundreds of nails, and transforming that analysis into a legible, coherent and informative narrative.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.