The Tomb of the Known Unknown Soldier: Identifying the Remains of Confederate Soldiers Buried near the Williamsburg Powder Magazine

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Individuals Known and Unknown: Case Studies from Two Burial Contexts at Colonial Williamsburg" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In an ironic twist, while the names of the Confederate casualties of the Battle of Williamsburg have been remembered and memorialized, literally carved in stone, the physical remains of the soldiers were lost and forgotten until we accidentally exposed their burials while excavating near the Williamsburg Powder Magazine. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how Williamsburg’s racial divide and the goals of the Lost Cause movement created this discontinuity and how these historical circumstances affected the goals and outcomes of our research. By combining the results of the archaeological excavation of the remains, investigations into the materiality of the artifacts affiliated with the deceased, documentary research in the National Archives, and osteological analysis of the four complete skeletons recovered from the Magazine we have taken the first steps toward reassociating these skeletal remains with their names and identities. ***Images of human remains and funerary objects will be shown in this presentation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Individuals Known and Unknown: Case Studies from Two Burial Contexts at Colonial Williamsburg   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39199.0