Civil War Combat Trenching: What It Was and How to Find It

Author(s): Philip Shiman; Julia Steele; David Lowe

Year: 2016

Summary

The last year of the Civil War witnessed a dramatic change in military tactics from open-field fighting to trench warfare as the soldiers increasingly covered themselves with fortifications on the battlefield, leading to the entrenched gridlock at Petersburg.  When under fire or if combat was imminent, the soldiers used an innovative process in which they fortified progressively, starting with basic shelters and gradually building them up into complex and impregnable earth-and-wood defenses.  The remains of these combat trenches, in all stages of development, can be found on a number of late-war battlefields today.  However, the early stage works in particular, consisting of tiny pits and scarped slopes, can be hard to identify and are often overlooked by researchers.  With the help of KOCOA analysis, contemporary images, recent photographs, and  LIDAR images of Petersburg National Battlefield, this presentation will provide some tips for recognizing and identifying combat trenching.

Cite this Record

Civil War Combat Trenching: What It Was and How to Find It. Philip Shiman, Julia Steele, David Lowe. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434409)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 716