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Archaeological Data Recovery at the Site of Hypothesized Civil War Gun Battery at Camp Lawton SR121/US25, Jenkins County, Georgia

Report Number
2025
Year of Publication
2000
Abstract

This report discusses the archival research, archaeological fieldwork and our conclusions on a hypothesized Civil War gun battery belonging to the fortifications around Camp Lawton (9JE1), a Confederate prisoner of war camp and now a state park. Fieldwork was conducted by a crew of three from New South Associates, Inc., from June 19 to June 26, 2000. The historical research was conducted from June 19 and during the summer of 2000 and included archival research at Emory University and the Magnolia Springs State Park. Archaeological field work included a metal detector survey to search for Civil War era artifacts, excavation of all positive detector readings, excavation of three slot trenches, recording of stratigraphies and mapping the surface anomalies at three inch contour intervals. No evidence of nineteenth-century artifacts or features were found. Based on the historical and archaeological evidence and oral history, the hypothesized gun emplacements appear to be a series of small twentieth-century borrow pits cut into a bank that was itself excavated for road construction. We therefore conclude that the surface features were not part of the fortifications around Camp Lawton.