Burnside Bridge: The Excavation of a Civil War Soundscape

by John Sabol

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.

170 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 12, 2013

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK. This is weird. This book's argument is not - at all - what I expected. Frequently, the weirdness does jump the shark into bonkerland, but at the edge of reason, there are some fascinating statements made that can enable future work.

Let me explain how I got here. I am a researcher of sound. I am completing a current project on soundscapes, and am revisiting this well-worked field to find new research.

Up comes Burnside Bridge: The Excavation of a Civil War Soundscape. Fascinating. There are some intriguing arguments about how past sounds live in present fields of meaning. Similarly, there is a great exploration of how to explore meanings in and from the past that are not visibly present.

Going well. Enjoyable book.

From page 5, the word 'ghost' appears, in inverted commas. It is used metaphorically, to explore how connections between the past and present are made meaningful. In the pages that follow, there is a discussion of the "blurring [of] all binary modalities of materialist science."

OK... Then we jump to a critique of binaries like - here we go - past and present, alive and dead, presence and becoming.

By page 14, the "hauntscape" makes an appearance. This concept is described as the process by which the past becomes 'culturally present' through 'participatory acts.'

From here, the weirdness switch is flicked. We are exploring "the topography of the hauntscape." We enter a "ghost excavation."

This book explores the soundscape of the men who fought and died at Rohrbach (Burnside) Bridge on the Antietam Battlefield on September 17, 1862. This is a fascinating project. It activates "fields of meaning" and "acoustemology."

It is the "ghost excavation" - with or without the inverted commas - that is weird. From page 71, there is a great deal of attention to haunting, hauntscapes, afterlife and the paranormal.

I am not interested in haunting, hauntscapes, afterlife and the paranormal.

I am interested in soundmarks, soundings, and audio manifestations of the past. These elements are present, but we as readers have to move being the ghost chaser narrative in this book.

There are meaningful and evocative phases within the monograph that can trigger outstanding future work. That is why this book has three stars. But read it for the theoretical inspiration, rather than the scholar as ghost catcher narrative.