Georgia archaeologists find Confederate POW camp

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - Preserved for nearly 150 years, perhaps by its own obscurity, Camp Lawton began yielding treasures from the Civil War almost as soon as archeologists began searching for the short-lived Confederate prison camp.

They found a corroded bronze buckle used to fasten tourniquets during amputations, a makeshift tobacco pipe with teeth marks in the stem and a picture frame folded and kept after the daguerreotype it held was lost.

Georgia officials say the discoveries, announced Wednesday, were made by a 36-year-old graduate student at Georgia Southern University who set out to find Camp Lawton for his thesis project in archaeology.

He stunned experienced pros by not only pinpointing the site, but also unearthing rare Civil War artifacts from a prison camp known as little more than a historical footnote on the path of Gen. William T. Sherman's devastating march from Atlanta to Savannah.

"What makes Camp Lawton so unique is it's one of those little frozen moments in time, and you don't get those very often," said Dave Crass, Georgia's state archaeologist. "Most professional archaeologists who ever thought about Camp Lawton came to the implicit conclusion that, because people weren't there very long, there wouldn't be much to find."

Camp Lawton imprisoned more than 10,000 Union troops after it opened in October 1864 to replace the infamously hellish war prison at Andersonville. It lasted barely six weeks before Sherman's army arrived in November and burned it.

The camp's brief existence made it a low priority among scholars. While known to be in or near Magnolia Springs State Park outside Millen, 50 miles south of Augusta, the camp's exact location was never verified.

That task last year fell to Georgia Southern student Kevin Chapman. The state Department of Natural Resources offered Chapman a chance to pursue his master's thesis by searching the park grounds for evidence of the 15-foot pine posts that formed Camp Lawton's stockade walls.

The work started in December. By February, Chapman along with his professor and about a dozen other students had dug up stains in the dirt left by rotting wood and forming a straight line - remnants of the stockade wall.