Article
The archaeology of military prisons from the American Civil War: globalization, resistance and masculinity
World Archaeology
(2020)
Abstract
Archaeologies of internment present unique challenges and benefits. Myriad aspects of human behavior that stretch over temporal scales of generations and centuries at other archaeological sites are visible in ephemeral traces of short-term occupation at sites of internment such as prisoner of war (POW)camps; resistance, domination, the structure and scaffolds of authority, agency and identity are created, cast, and discarded into the soil. The paper examines some of these stories from the earth through military prisons of the American Civil War, and the ephemeral archaeology of selected case studies: Camp Lawton, Andersonville, and Johnson’s Island. Themes explored are globalization and the intersection of the global at the local in prison camps, resistance, its forms, and function within POW camps; and how resistance intersecting with systems of structural violence within internment camps spurred the development of a masculinity in the 19th century during, and after the American Civil War, different from societal norms
Keywords
- American Civil War,
- Archaeology,
- Historical Archaeology,
- Conflict Archaeology,
- Prisoners of war,
- POWs,
- internment
Disciplines
Publication Date
March 24, 2020
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2020.1739553
Citation Information
McNutt, Ryan K. 2019. The archaeology of military prisons from the American Civil War: globalization, resistance and masculinity, World Archaeology, 51:5, 689-708, DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2020.1739553