Civil War ironclad’s ‘treasures’ to be shown, discussed in free lecture June 2 May 22, 2015

SAVANNAH, Ga. – The long-buried life of the Confederate ironclad CSS Georgia is being resurrected and will be discussed in a free lecture given by two of the lead archaeologists preserving the ship’s artifacts. Speakers will bring recently recovered artifacts to the free event June 2 at 7 p.m., at the auditorium of the Savannah History Museum, 303 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., in Savannah, Georgia.

Underwater archaeologist Stephen James, M.A., with Panamerican Consultants is a principal investigator on the project. He and underwater archaeologist Gordon Watts, Ph.D., of Tidewater Atlantic Research, co-principal investigator, will share the discoveries about the CSS Georgia in a free public presentation. Topics will include the unique ship’s construction, its funding, and life aboard the civil war gunboat. Attendees will also learn how divers are documenting and recovering the vessel, the laboratory work involved, and what happens next in this complex project.

The Savannah History Museum will be open at no charge from 6-7 p.m. and light refreshments will be served in the auditorium lobby before the lecture. The lecture is sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District and is free of charge and open to the public. The lecture and museum entry is hosted by Coastal Heritage Society.

This lecture was previously announced for an earlier date. The date of the lecture has changed.

Quick Facts:
• Deepening the Savannah River channel for the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project would damage the vessel; therefore, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing archaeological excavation of the CSS Georgia to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act.
• Divers have been excavating the 150-year-old wreck since January and are preparing in June to recover cannons and large portions of casemates.
• This lecture marks the first of eight public outreach efforts focused on the CSS Georgia.
Follow the project and discover additional outreach opportunities at http://1.usa.gov/1G6S2Hn

Watch the Camp Lawton Prison Discovery on Time Team America Episode October 5, 2012

UPDATE 8/6/2014

HERE IS THE LINK: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365255141/

This link goes to an online version of the upcoming Time Team America episode on the search and discovery of Camp Lawton Confederate prisoner of war camp near Millen, Georgia. I was a part of the team, I got the hat and the minimum wages from Oregon Public TV. We did our GPR and other remote sensing work over about 10 acres the days before the circus began. Rita Elliott and I drove up to see the circus but carefully avoided getting in front of the camera. We were there the day that the stockade wall was discovered (I got some rare video footage of that on my iphone). Our LAMAR Institute colleague, Daniel E. Battle, was part of the circus. Dan Battle actually discovered the juicy archaeological stuff at Camp Lawton back in December, 2009. That is all documented in our LAMAR Institute report number 161
http://thelamarinstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=58
Dan Battle also made the first discoveries of the Confederate guard’s camp, which I think is a MAJOR find too. Congratulations to Dan Battle!

Meg, the blonde lady with the red cart, was the boss of the geophysical team, of which I was part back in October 2012. That was about four days of craziness where we covered a huge area, probably the largest acreage of geophysical work ever done in Georgia. Meg did a masterful job in pulling it all together. Congratulations to everyone who played a part in this important discovery! I hope you enjoy the movie.

You may also watch the Time Team America discovery on your regular television set via your local PBS affiliate. Just check their schedules for time and dates.

UPDATE 3/6/2013, James K. Chapman’s M.A. Thesis, entitled, COMPARISON OF ARCHEOLOGICAL SURVEY TECHNIQUES AT CAMP LAWTON, A CIVIL WAR PRISON STOCKADE, is mirrored at the following link: Tchapman_james_k_201201_mass

2012 Post:

Over the past week a team of archaeologists converged on the CSA Camp Lawton prison site at Magnolia Springs, near Millen, Georgia determined to make major discoveries. Their goal was realized on Thursday and Friday when three walls of the prison stockade were confirmed by excavation. Earlier in the week a smaller team of geophysicists scurried over the landscape with high-tech tools busy making maps of the subsurface environment. Ground Penetrating Radar, Electro-magnetics and Flux gate gradiometers were among the tools used to search for remains of the Civil War prison. Excavations ended today (Friday Oct 5) with several major finds capping a week of many grand discoveries. The Time Team America episode on the Camp Lawton investigations will air next year. Meanwhile, readers may wish to read the writings of John Derden, Daniel Elliott, or Daniel Battle. The LAMAR Institute’s report is available online for free download at

Searching for the Camp Lawton prison stockade wall.

Click to access publication_162.pdf

Raw video footage of the discovery  may be seen on Youtube.com (shown below):

 

UPDATE:

Stockade Wall Found at Camp Lawton
Article by Bryan Tucker, State Archaeologist

Preservation Posts, November 2012, Issue 42,

Georgia Department of Natural Resources

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=e6c3a4351838f93c43cd740be&id=c5da2357fd&e=d6fa022296

 

Artillery Cache Discovered at Lovejoy October 11, 2009

Mark Pollard, Henry County Historian and the guiding light for the Nash Farm Battlefield Park, unearthed a cache of 42 unfired artillery shells from the Civil War era on October 9, 2009. The find was first discovered by a landowner in a residential neighborhood, who exposed one artillery shell while digging a water line in his hard with a ditch witch. The landowner contacted Pollard, who recovered the remaining 41 shells. Pollard notes that this house is in the approximate position of an artillery battery of the U.S. 15th Army Corps, who were engaged in the September, 1864 Battle of Lovejoy. The cache, shown below, is currently being defused and cleaned for ultimate display in the Nash Farm museum.

Photo Courtesy of Mark Pollard.

Nash Farm Battlefield Park Opens March 31, 2008

Here is a Youtube link to a video interview with B.J. Mathis as she discusses the recent history of the Nash Farm battlefield park at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMqMH9ynI-8

Henry County’s Nash Farm Battlefield Park is Now Open!

March 15, 2008, Hampton/Lovejoy, Georgia

Henry County, Georgia officially opened it’s Nash Farm Battlefield Park for daily public use on this date. This 204 acre park occupies the site of a fierce Civil War Cavalry battle and a later major Infantry battle. The park, located along the Clayton-Henry County line east of Lovejoy, Georgia, is mostly in former cattle and buffalo pasture and it represents a fast-disappearing rural landscape on the outskirts of metropolitan Atlanta. In 2007 the LAMAR Institute conducted a historical archaeology survey of the battlefield. The report from this study, authored by Daniel Elliott and Tracy M. Dean, was submitted to Henry County Government in August, 2007. This same report is available to the public online at this link:

Click the link below for a .pdf version of the LAMAR Institute’s report on the Nash Farm battlefield:

publication-123

or for a copy of the same report in Microsoft Word format, click on:

Nash Farm Battlefield: History and Archaeology, LAMAR Institute Publication Series, Report 123. The LAMAR Institute, Savannah, Georgia, 2007.

For more historical information, visit Henry County’s website for the Nash Farm Battlefield Park at http://www.henrycountybattlefield.com/

Atlanta’s Sprawl Threatens Georgia’s Greenspaces.