Army Wives and Kids: Civilian Lives in Military Context at the Augusta Arsenal

Summary

Between 1826 and 1955, the Augusta Arsenal operated on the land currently occupied by the Summerville Campus of Augusta University. As a military site, it is easy to conceptualize the Arsenal as a male gendered place and associate it almost exclusively with war-related manufacturing activities. However, most of the artifacts recovered from the Arsenal directly address the domestic lives of the people who lived there. Additionally, many artifacts from the Arsenal speak to presence of the often nameless and faceless wives and children of the officers who resided there. The purpose of this paper is to expose the hidden history of women and children at the Augusta Arsenal and how civilian values infiltrated a military landscape during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, Class, Race, Ethnicity, Age, Religion, the Military, etc.

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 404