Burnside Bridge: The Excavation of a Civil War Soundscape

By John G Sabol Jr

The heroic and fierce struggle for Burnside Bridge, part of the battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), was the single deadliest day of combat in American History. The engagement at Burnside Bridge has been called the "Thermopylae of the American Civil War". There, less that 300 Confederates (2nd and 20th Georgia), and against overwhelming numbers, defended and held the bridge during five Union assaults. The courage and brave deeds of men like Holmes (2nd Georgia), and Kingsbury and Griswold (11th Connecticut) are noted in historical accounts. But others, who fought as bravely and heroically, remain unheralded or unknown.Burnside Bridge was explored in a series of "ghost excavations", in an attempt to "unearth" what still remains of that Civil War presence. During our fieldwork there, we recovered a multitude of "vestiges" ("residuals") and "traces" ("interactive") of the Civil War battlefield soundscape. In the process, we built a solid "bridge", connecting our data to recent archaeological (surface assemblages of past presence), ethnographic (acoustemology as a way of knowing), and memory and consciousness (self-resonance; social/mental fields) studies. The results of these non-evasive "excavations" are summarized here, and their implications for ghost research are cited.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1482032449
• ISBN13: 9781482032444
• Release Date: January 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 170 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"