The Fort Fisher State Historic Site on the southern coast of North Carolina is famous for its Civil War history. Today, you can tour the site and see what remains of the earthworks.
History is written in the Earth — or at least that’s why Michael McCaffery says he likes archaeology.
“A lot of the projects we do get to give a voice and a face to a lot of the people that don’t have the opportunity to have one because they’re not here anymore,” McCaffery said. “Or their story hasn’t been told correctly through history.”
Not to mention, he says it’s fun.
“This really makes the 4-year-old in me really happy. I don’t know if this is a memory that my parents made up once I started doing archaeology,” McCaffery said. “They swear that I got a note sent home with me when I was in kindergarten that said I spend too much time in the sandbox.”
The big sandbox he’s playing in now is on the Fort Fisher State Historic Site and it’s filled with Civil War history — but not the kind you’ll find in a book.
“You get taught the Civil War in school,” McCaffery said. “But you don’t get taught about timber, bomb-proof shelters and tunnels and stuff like that.”
That’s exactly what they’re excavating — tunnels that connected ammunition magazines and provided shelter to Confederate soldiers when the Union attacked. When Fort Fisher fell, the Union burned the tunnels. Something that field archaeologist Salina Melotti says can be seen on the charred wood that has been underground for a century and a half.
“This is supposed to be the potential, it’s like a burn pile of some sort, so we think they were either using it for cooking or potentially where the fire started in the actual shelter and the Union set it on fire initially,” Melotti said. “So all of this dark orange stain is where the fire actually burnt this soil and changed the chemistry of it to create this color.”
And that’s not all that’s been found. These archaeologists dug up bullets, cannonballs and even Native American ceramics.
McCaffery says these finds help tell the stories not just of the soldiers who worked in these tunnels, but of the enslaved natives who built them, as well.
“Cultures like this, I mean, we won’t be able to give them too much of a face, but at least we can say that they were here,” McCaffery said. “I think that’s the most rewarding part of it.”
Archaeologists like McCaffery are happy they get to help unearth these stories while learning more about such a historically significant site in North Carolina.
“This project specifically has been very eye-opening for me because I have not focused much of my career on the Civil War and just to get this deep into an earthwork is just phenomenal.”
The archaeological finds are being collected for historical data, and the tunnels will be filled back in with dirt.
As part of the construction of the new Fort Fisher Visitors Center, a replica of the earthworks will be built so visitors can learn more about these findings.
