Lens into History: Burial Recovery at Vicksburg National Cemetery

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Following a landslide at Vicksburg National Cemetery in 2020, a portion of the collapsed terrace within the cemetery was subject to emergency excavations to recover burials that had fallen from the Section T terrace. In addition, the landslide covered a portion of the Section J terrace. These impacted areas contain burials of some of the first United States Colored Troops (USCT) who were part of the Vicksburg Campaign. Additional mitigative measures were determined necessary to exhume burials on the intact but endangered Section T terrace as well as those covered by the landslide on the Section J terrace. Manual and mechanical excavation techniques were implemented during the recovery process, but exhumations along the scarp face required more unique and situationally appropriate methodologies. Additional and ongoing erosion necessitated the re-excavation of units dug in 2020 during the initial recovery efforts and the attempted re-association of more recently recovered human remains to the previously exposed burials. Results of this project have implications for the interpretation of burials of “unknown” individuals and the narrative of the USCT experience, both at Vicksburg National Cemetery and within the broader National Cemetery System.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41505.0