Graves found near the site of Colonial Williamsburg are believed to have been dead from the Battle of Williamsburg, fought in 1862. The Washington Post described the effort to understand the mass grave so recently discovered:
Archaeologists are exposing the bones and plan to exhume them to conduct DNA analysis.
Fragments of clothing that emerge could tell on which side individuals fought. And the bones could reveal a soldier’s cause of death.
“That’s something that we’ll be looking out for,” Gary said. “Cause of death … may be obvious, maybe in the form of bullets, shrapnel, or other injuries.”
…Gary said the mass grave is near the old site of the Williamsburg Baptist Church — which was demolished in the mid-1900s — that was beside the Powder Magazine and served as a hospital during and after the battle.
“We’re currently in the process of exposing the remains to determine how many individuals are in the grave,” he said. Some bones have been removed, but most are still in the ground.
Once exhumed, the remains will go to the Institute for Historical Biology at William & Mary for study. DNA analysis will be done by Raquel Fleskes at the University of Connecticut, Gary said.
The discovery was earlier reported by the Virginia Gazette and the Daily Press.
The battle of Williamsburg, on May 5, 1862, was fought southeast of the town. Afterward, almost every building in the community flew a yellow hospital flag, the historian Stephen W. Sears wrote.
“Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers, even civilians were in these makeshift hospitals … one of them being in the Baptist church right next to the Powder Magazine,” Gary said. “There’s quite a bit of documentary evidence right after the battle about there being mass graves dug for the casualties that are happening in the Baptist church hospital.”
Gary said the human remains were discovered last year during archaeological excavation around the Powder Magazine.
The octagonal brick building was constructed in 1715 to house arms and ammunition, according to Colonial Williamsburg. The building was restored in 1930.
“We only saw a fragment of the remains,” Gary said. “We immediately knew that they were human. We halted our excavation … covered them back over.”
In January, the team received a permit to exhume the remains in the grave, and the work resumed last month.
