Digging Deeper: Excavation and Analysis of Features West of Battery A at Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site

Abstract

Brick and ballast stone features located in an area to the west of Battery A at Fort Anderson within the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic site are believed to have been the location of barracks for troops during the American Civil War. Within the last twenty years, archaeological excavations have been performed at the site providing extensive data. However, the number of military artifacts recovered is somewhat limited when compared with archaeological assemblages at similar Civil War barracks sites. This has left the answer to the research question unconfirmed regarding the site’s occupants. Additional research was conducted to more clearly determine the occupants of this area to the west of Battery A, presently interpreted as a barracks site. During the 2017 ECU Summer Field School additional excavations were performed west of Battery A at the location of an undisturbed brick and ballast stone feature. Analysis of the material recovered once again revealed little by way of military artifacts. However, certain artifacts are suggestive of an early to mid-nineteenth century occupation of the site sometime before the Civil War. Subsequent archaeological analysis and historical research relevant to the site suggest that the area west of Battery A was the location of a settlement for enslaved African Americans associated with Orton Plantation during the Antebellum Period in the decades prior to Fort Anderson’s construction during the American Civil War.