Historic Human Remains Detection Methods and Results at Fort Scott (9DR8) US Army Cemetery, Lake Seminole, Georgia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "US Army Corps of Engineers: Current Work in CRM, Research, and Creative Mitigation" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fort Scott (9DR8) was a US Army fort constructed in 1816 on the Georgia frontier on the north bank of the Flint River during the First Seminole War. Meant to be a temporary encampment, it was located to protect white frontiersmen pushing into Creek territory. Occupied until 1821, the fort’s occupants participated in the destruction of Negro Fort on the Apalachicola River, the Fowltown Battles, and other skirmishes along the Florida-Georgia border. Ultimately, malaria won out and the fort was abandoned. Limited cultural resources investigations of the site began in the 1950s ahead of dam construction, but none identified the exact location of the fort’s cemetery which was reported to contain 200–300 burials. Today, the fort’s location is remote, overgrown, and beneath fallen trees from Hurricane Michael. There is no surface expression of the cemetery. Erosion and water encroachment from Lake Seminole threaten the site. As part of a Section 110 cultural resources investigation at the site in 2023, the Mobile District will use Historic Human Remains Detection (HHRD) dogs and ground penetrating radar (GPR) to locate the nineteenth century US Army cemetery at Fort Scott. This paper presents the results of this investigation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• US Army Corps of Engineers: Current Work in CRM, Research, and Creative Mitigation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40301.0