AIA lecture on archaeology at Andersonville Prison

calendar icon01 Mar 2013    

The National Park Service's Guy Prentice will present a lecture titled "Archaeology at Andersonville: Three Decades of Excavations at the Civil War's Most Infamous Prison Camp" on Monday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m. in Richards Hall room 15 on the UNL city campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Prentice's lecture is the fourth lecture on archaeology for The Lincoln-Omaha Society of the Archaeological Institute of America's 2012-2013 lecture series. Prentice is the archaeologist who has led the investigations of Andersonville Prison, the notorious Civil War Confederate military prison located in Andersonville, Ga.

Andersonville was viewed by the Union prisoners who were held at the infamous prison camp as the scene of some of the worst atrocities suffered during the American Civil War. Nearly one in three of the roughly 45,000 prisoners who passed through its gates died of malnutrition, exposure and disease during its 14–month existence. After the war ended, the commandant of the prison camp, Capt. Henry Wirz, was the only Confederate convicted and executed for war crimes as a result of his role in the treatment of prisoners at Andersonville.

Prentice directed the major excavations at Andersonville from 1987-1990, and this lecture highlights the discoveries and findings of his research and includes data on the construction techniques used in the original construction of the prison stockade built by slaves, the extension of the prison enclosure built by prisoners, the north gate, an attempted escape tunnel that failed before completion and some of the “shebangs” or crude shanties that were built by the prisoners for shelter.

For more information on Andersonville, visit: www.nps.gov/ande/historyculture/camp_sumter.htm.

Richards Hall is located at Stadium Drive and T streets, just south of Memorial Stadium. Public parking is available in the Stadium Drive parking garage.

• Sun., April 25 at 5 p.m.: Susann Lusnia, Tulane University, "Usurping History: The Severan Roman Forum" at Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha.