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ChaptEr FourtEEn Cultural Landscapes and Collateral Damage Fredericksburg and Northern Spotsylvania County, Virginia, in the Civil War ClarEnCE r. GEiEr and kimbErly tinkham introduCtion On 12 August 1864, Private Marion Epperly of the 54th Virginia Infantry manning the defenses of Atlanta, Georgia, stated the following: “They [the Union] keep shelling the town study/They have all most runed the plase with shells: they have kild and wounded a great many women and children/I can tell you they see very hard times and are in a grate deel of dainger/ . . . I cannot tell what they doo for provision here/the [Confederate] soldier has taken every thing out of the Gardens that they could Get” (Epperly 1862–65, original spellings preserved). On 10 August 1863, Private Daniel Snyder, of the 11th Virginia Cavalry was encamped on Confederate lands at Culpeper Court House, Virginia. He stated: “Of all the countries I ever got into this is the hardest and the people the meanest. If it were not wrong I almost wish the Yankees could stay in here with such a class. We were better treated in Pennsylvania than by these stuck up Tuckahoes. The fact is they hate to see a soldier come near their houses” (Snyder 1862–65). These two insights comment powerfully on the often overlooked, or taken for granted, fact that military engagements rarely take place in cultural isolation . Further, the character of those actions when considered in concert with existing domestic communities can have significant and potentially devastating short- and long-term impacts. With respect to the American Civil War, it can be argued that as with all warfare and military actions, its end as a military experience typically marked the beginning of significant political, social, and economic changes in the lives of individual families, regions, and the nation. It is the purpose of this paper to consider how the analysis of military battles can be used to generate models of pre-existing natural and human landscapes over which they were fought and to assess the “collateral” impacts of those actions on them. To illustrate these points, the impact of the Civil War on the community of Fredericksburg is presented as a case study. ConCEpt and thEory To understand the impacts of a broad range of military activities on the environment and human communities, it is essential to put military sites into an appropriate conceptual context. Modern texts on archaeological method (Sharer and Ashmore 2003:124–26; Renfrew and Bahn 2004:75–78) draw attention to the importance of the analysis of archaeological data within the context of a region and to an associated branch of archaeology, landscape archaeology . Both of these are directly relevant to the study and interpretation of military sites and ultimately, to an understanding of their historic importance and impact. A region is “a definable area bounded by topographic features such as mountains and bodies of water” (Sharer and Ashmore 2003:124). An archaeological region is the largest and most flexible of the spatial clusters of archaeological data, the definition of which allows archaeologists to investigate a wider range of activities beyond those attributed to single sites. Such regions may include ecological and cultural factors along with physiographic traits and boundaries . In addition, an archaeological region “may be 166 clarence r. geier and kimberly tinkham defined as the sustaining area that contains a series of interrelated (contemporary) human communities sharing a single cultural eco-system” (Sharer and Ashmore 2003:124). Such regions logically vary in scale, complexity, and in the patterns of use reflected in the spatial distribution of sites attributed to the contemporary and interacting human communities. The delineation of such regions is the challenge of the individual archaeologist or historical-archaeologist. Certainly, the archaeological region as a military construct is useful when studying the nature of the interaction between armies as distinct social and political entities occupying or contesting regions housing an already established domestic, civilian community. Sharer and Ashmore (2003) present landscape archaeology as a branch of the larger field that works to make the regional approach more comprehensive, particularly as it relates to revealing and documenting the manner in which resident human communities exploited, modified and adapted the natural environment for their use. They define landscape archaeology as “an approach within archaeology that emphasizes examination of the complete landscape, focusing on dispersed features and on areas between and surrounding traditional sites as well as on the sites themselves” (Sharer and Ashmore 2003:124, G-9). Physiographic and ecological features have...

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