Archaeologists surveying a Civil War cemetery in northern Virginia have chanced upon a surprising find: a buried pathway from the 1800s.
As Mark Price reports for the Charlotte Observer, researchers from the Northeast Archeological Resources Program (NARP) uncovered the 19th-century road—as well as a brick-lined culvert—at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields National Military Park. The team was using ground-penetrating radar and magnetometer surveys to identify a suitable location for a proposed burial vault.
“Projects like this show just how complex park sites can be even just a few centimeters below the surface,” notes NARP in a statement. “Doing archaeology in advance of any excavation on federal land provides new interpretive materials and ensures that important work, such as reinterment, can proceed without disturbance.”
Excavations began in late June, with researchers digging at Fredericksburg National Cemetery in search of unmarked burials or historical structures that could interfere with the new gravesite. As Price writes in a separate Charlotte Observer article, officials plan to rebury unidentified human remains found near a former battlefield hospital in Fredericksburg in 2015.
Original Post From Isis Davis-Marks/Smithsonian Magazine
Read More Here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-discover-buried-road-civil-war-cemetery-180978264/
