Panopticism, Pines and POWS: Applying Conflict Landscape Tools to the Archaeology of Internment

Summary

The military terrain analysis system KOCOA (Key Terrain, Observation,Cover/concealment, Obstacles, and Avenues of approach), or OAKOC, or OCOKA was developed as part of the burgeoning discipline of military science around the start of the American Civil War. It is now part of the NPS’s American Battlefield Protection Program’s survey methodology, was introduced to conflict archaeology by Scott and McFeaters (2011:115-16) and Scott and Bleed (2011:47-49), and has been used as a tool for predicting battlefield locations. However, it has potential applications beyond battlefields. This paper explores how applying KOCOA elucidates conflict landscapes of power, dominance, and control. An analysis of the interment landscape of Camp Lawton, an 1864 Confederate POW camp, with KOCOA will highlight how principles of dominance were applied, and how concealment and obstacles actively disrupted the ‘unequal gaze’ of Foucault. KOCOA delivers the visualization of these abstracts within a GIS, and thus guides excavation and interpretation. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Surveying the Field: A Look to the Future of Conflict Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 735