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Students Dig Port Hudson History
By JAMES MINTON
Advocate Baker - Zachary bureau
Published: Oct 6, 2009 - Page: 1B
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| Regional archaeologist Rob Mann, of LSU, left, photographs an excavation Thursday at a Civil War cannon position that was part of Union Siege Battery 8 on the Port Hudson battlefield north of Baton Rouge. LSU graduate student Brian Hess, second from left, Port Hudson Interpretative Ranger Jarred Guidry, hidden, and Virginia Middleton hold a tarp to shield the floor from direct sunlight. Others taking part in the archaeological survey are Mark Robinson and Amanda Kittoe, behind Middleton, and Matthew Helmer and Kelleye French, seated, who are working on an adjacent excavation. |
PORT HUDSON — LSU graduate archaeology student Brian
Hess once studied American Indians of the western United
States, but he’s now trying his hand at Civil War archaeology
on part of a major Louisiana battlefield.
Hess, from Seattle, is studying Union Siege Battery 8 — or
what’s left of it — at the Port Hudson State Historic Site
north of Baton Rouge, the last Confederate stronghold on
the Mississippi River.
Federal troops fired 12-inch Napoleon cannons and highly
accurate 3-inch ordinance rifles at a Confederate position
known as “Fort Desperate,” said Port Hudson Manager
Gregg Potts and Curator Mike Fraering.
Union forces surrounding Port Hudson tried two all-out
assaults against the position on May 27 and June 14, 1863,
but the defenders held their ground. Union commanders
then settled on a siege strategy to force the entire garrison to
surrender on July 9.
While studying at the University of Washington, Hess said
he participated in archaeological projects at Pacific Coast
Indian sites.“The American Civil War didn’t have quite the presence in
Washington as it did in Louisiana,” he said jokingly.“There is a lot that gets left over from battlefields. A lot of‘trash’ was left over there, and trash becomes artifacts,” Hess
said, pointing in the direction of Fort Desperate, about a
quarter-mile away.
The Port Hudson project forms the basis of his master’s
thesis, in which Hess said he will try to contribute to the
body of knowledge concerning the construction of Civil War
earthworks.
Archaeologists have studied Fort Desperate, but not as much
is known about the gun batteries that faced the position,
Hess said.
Union Siege Battery 8 is noted on the hiking trail to Fort
Desperate but is concealed by large trees and thick
underbrush. One of the goals is to determine the exact
boundaries of the battery, Hess said.
Hess and the park employees also hope they can find
evidence of a zigzag trench, or sap, that historical accounts
say the Union troops dug from the battery to a short distance
from the Confederate lines.
Fraering said Union troops would have filled in the trench
after they took Port Hudson to prevent Confederate troops
from counter-attacking. No one knows exactly where it
started or ended.
Hess and his associates looked near the Confederate lines
earlier this year but could not find the sap.
A group of LSU students, volunteers, state Office of
Archaeology employee Kelleye French and Southeast
Regional Archaeologist Rob Mann, also of LSU,
painstakingly excavated five square-meter sections of one
gun position in the battery last week to begin the latest
phase, looking for possible signs of a structure that may have
been erected as cover for the gunners.
One early discovery was a wire that would have been yanked
with a lanyard to set off a friction primer to fire an artillery
piece.“It’s relatively rare. You don’t see them in relic books,”
Fraering said.
Mann said the project also will produce a digital
topographical map of the area that the park staff may
overlay with historical maps to gain a better understanding
of the battle positions. 2009
LSU Scholars Join Forces to Create Coastal Sustainability Studio
A multi-disciplinary team of scholars at LSU that includes landscape architects, engineers and coastal scientists is embarking on a ground-breaking, collaborative effort to study issues related to sustainability along the fragile and vulnerable Gulf Coast. Their effort is called the Coastal Sustainability Studio, and it is taking a comprehensive approach to studying one of the most critical problems facing coastal communities, particularly in Louisiana.
The Coastal Sustainability Studio is funded by a $300,000 donation from America’s WETLAND Foundation and brings together experts from disciplines across the university. Foremost among them are the College of Art & Design, College of Engineering and School of the Coast and the Environment, which will participate in all the studio’s projects. Many other disciplines will be brought in to work on projects depending on the specific subject.
“We really want this to be university-wide,” said Lynne Carter, associate director of the Coastal Sustainability Studio. “We’re trying to take a comprehensive look at how to build a more sustainable coast.”
The Coastal Sustainability Studio is ground breaking for a couple of reasons. First, it involves multiple colleges and schools within the university, each of which brings its own perspective to the multi-faceted problem of how to design and build sustainable communities in an eroding, flood-prone region. To that end, those involved with the studio will be looking at issues of economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and cultural sustainability.
“This could be really significant, both for the university and for the state,” said Elizabeth Mossop, director of the nationally renowned Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture and director of the studio’s first project. “The Coastal Sustainability Studio can really take a role in looking at the complex issues of urban development and strategic planning.”
Second, as its name implies, the undertaking will be done in a studio setting. As a practical matter that means those involved will be rolling up their sleeves and working side-by-side in creative problem-solving to produce real, workable solutions. That’s easier said than done in a traditional academic environment.
“It’s an interesting model because it’s somewhere between conventional academic applied research and what happens in practice,” Mossop said. “A lot of universities are moving toward these models that are proactive and mirror what goes on in the professional realm.”
For its inaugural project, the Coastal Sustainability Studio will focus on Bayou Bienvenue, a wetlands area near New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward. Mossop suggested the site because it has been the subject of several design projects within the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture over the past three years. Both she and her students have worked with community organizations and conservation groups on ways to restore Bayou Bienvenue and design sustainable communities along its shores.
The Coastal Sustainability Studio will build on that work. Its project will be done in several phases, beginning with strategic planning and ending with the development of a concrete proposal for redeveloping the area. Its finished product will include a public document and exhibition.
For those involved in the project, the Coastal Sustainability Studio is an exciting opportunity to work in a new way with colleagues from other parts of campus on an issue that affects an entire region of the country.
“The significance of the Coastal Sustainability Studio lies in the capacity for the design disciplines to work with scientists, engineers, economists and others to address issues effecting not just Louisiana, but coastal environments around the globe,” said Jori Erdman, director of the LSU School of Architecture. “This is an opportunity to demonstrate the value of design research and our mode of practice alongside more empirical disciplines.”
For more information, contact Stephanie Riegel at the LSU College of Art & Design at 225-505-8997.
To learn more about the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, visit http://landscape.lsu.edu. 2009
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Two New Books on Hurricanes and New Orleans.
On August 29th 2005 Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and Louisiana, and the effects are still dramatic. Now three geographers from the Department of Geography and Anthropology have published two new books on Hurricanes and New Orleans.
Dr. Barry Keim (State Climatologist and professor in G&A) and Dr. Robert Muller (former State climatologist and emeritus Professor in G&A) have published a new book entitled “Hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico” (LSU Press). Since 2004, the shores around the Gulf of Mexico have been in the crosshairs for an increasing number of hurricanes and tropical storms, including Charley and Wilma in southwestern Florida and Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike along the northern Gulf coast from Panama City to near Galveston. In this definitive guide, climatologists Barry D. Keim and Robert A. Muller examine the big picture of Gulf hurricanes—from the 1800s to the present and from Key West, Florida, to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula—providing an extraordinary compilation and interpretation of the entire region’s hurricane and tropical storm history.
Drawing from their own research and from National Hurricane Center records, Keim and Muller examine numerous individual Gulf storms, considering each hurricane’s origin, oceanic and atmospheric influences, seasonality, track, intensity, size, point of landfall, storm surge, and impact on life, property, and the environment. Keim and Muller begin their book by scrutinizing the Gulf’s deadliest storm, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, whose victims received little to no warning of its approach. They then retrace 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the most costly storm, using NHC advisories and reports. Their comparison of these two catastrophic events shows that despite 105 years of tremendous technological advances, hurricanes remain ultimately rather unpredictable and human warning, readiness, and response measures continue to be imperfect. An epilogue summarizes the destructive 2008 hurricane season, including storms Dolly, Gustav, and Ike. Plentiful maps, charts, tables, graphs, and photos, along with anecdotal observations and an informative text, make Hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico a captivating and useful volume for Gulf residents, storm trackers, the scientific community, or anyone fascinated by the weather.
Dr. Craig Colten, Carl O. Sauer Professor in Geography and Anthropology, has also just published a new book entitled “Perilous Place, Powerful Storms: Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana”
University Press of Mississippi, 2009.
After Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed the hurricane protection levees surrounding New Orleans and its suburbs in August 2005, many asked how
such expensive structures failed so completely. Engineering
investigations have probed the technical failure, and Craig Colten
offers a substantive investigation of the role of society in erecting a
flawed protection system.
Immediately in the wake of Hurricane Betsy in 1965, congress authorized the Corps of Engineers to begin work on a massive earthen barrier to
prevent the next storm from inundating the city. With a projected
completion date of 1978, planning and construction soon fell behind
schedule, and with it the original cost estimates ballooned. Delays
arose from conflicting visions of the land to be protected, who would
pay for it, and debates over environmental impacts. While the Corps had
the most direct influence on plans, local organizations contributed to
adjustments and delays that left the levee system incomplete in August 2005.
Designed to protect much of the region around New Orleans, the
structures enabled developers and local governments to extend the urban
footprint into areas previously consider unsafe and uninhabitable. As a
result, more people had moved into harm's way when Katrina made landfall.
Not only did the levee system encourage urban expansion, but it had
design limitations unknown to most who depended on it.
The massive impact of Katrina was not just the consequence of design or
construction failures, complex social, political, and economic factors
contributed to the calamity. Colten’s work provides insight into this
critical process. 2009
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G&A PhD Student Ryan Orgera Official Interpreter at the Prix Louisiane Ceremony.
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On April 24th, 2009, the Center for French and Francophone Studies asked Ryan Orgera, PhD student in Geography to act as interpreter for the Prix Louisiane ceremony. The Prix Louisiane is a literary prize awarded to outstanding French-language fiction writers. This year’s recipient is Henri Lopes, a Congolese short-story writer and novelist. Lopes is considered one of the finest Francophone African writers, and also serves as the Republic of Congo’s (Brazzaville) ambassador to France, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, and the Vatican. As the former deputy director of UNESCO and Francophonie, and as Prime Minister of the RC, he found endless material to use as subjects in his numerous works.
The Prix Louisiane ceremony was held in the French House on LSU’s campus. Attendees included Olivier Brochenin, Consul General of France in New Orleans, François Rivasseau, Deputy Chief of Mission Embassy of France in Washington D.C., Scott Hutcherson, Deputy Secretary Louisiana Office of Culture & Development, Mike Martin, LSU Chancellor, Astrid Merget, LSU Provost, Guillermo Ferreyra, Dean of College of Arts & Sciences, Greg Stone, Chair of French & Francophone Studies, and hostess Sylvie Dubois, Gabriel Muir Professor of French Studies and director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies, and many others. Ryan’s task was to interpret from English to French and French to English. The first task was to interpret for Hervé Cassan, the Phyllis M. Taylor Professor of French Studies and the former U.N. Ambassador to Francophonie, followed by Mike Martin, Sylvie Dubois, Scott Hutcherson, and Ambassador Lopes. The entire ceremony lasted nearly two and a half hours, and required nearly constant input from Ryan. Ryan stated that it was a tremendous honor to be asked and to have served as a interpreter for such illustrious figures in literature, academia, and diplomacy. 2009
New Publication by Patrick Hesp and Sergio Dillenburg.
Sergio Dillenburg (CECO, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) and Patrick Hesp (G&A) have just published an edited book entitled Geology and Geomorphology of Holocene Coastal Barriers of Brazil. The book is published by Springer and represents the culmination of 8 years of research and collaborations by Patrick Hesp with Dillenburg and various Brazilian geologists. The book is the first work of its kind to cover the geology and geomorphology of the entire 9,200 km of the Brazilian coast.
2009
Graduate Student Invited to Speak at 5th NRF Open Assembly.
Russell Fielding, doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University has been invited to speak at, and to participate in, the 5th Open Assembly of the Northern Research Forum as a NRF Young Researcher.
One of the main objectives of the NRF is to fund the participation of young researchers from the circumpolar north in the NRF Open Meetings alongside more senior research experts, officials and professionals. The young researchers are expected to deliver formal presentations based on their own research, serve as rapporteurs, evaluate presentations and discussions of all sessions conducted, and present their findings during a final Summary Session as well as in the published proceedings.
The 5th NRF Open Assembly Seeking Balance in a Changing North will be held in Anchorage, Alaska, 24 -27 September 2008. 2008
Tony Lewis Retires.
After 30 years of dedicated teaching, research, and service at Louisiana State University, Dr. Anthony J. "Tony" Lewis retired at the end of the Spring 2008 semester. He was honored by friends, family, and colleagues at a party on May 2 in the French House on the LSU campus hosted by the Department of Geography and Anthropology.
Although he and his wife Barbara are moving to their new home in Idaho, Tony expects to return to Baton Rouge occasionally as he continues his remote sensing research projects. 2008
Graduate Student Wins McColl Family Fellowship
Russell Fielding, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University, will go to Newfoundland to research the pilot whale drive fisheries in the aftermath of their ban by the Canadian government. In his application for the fellowship, Fielding wrote, "It is my goal, as I mature in the field of geography, to produce at least one journalistic article for each academic article that I write. I fully embrace FOCUS on Geography's mission to publish work that is geographical in concept and jounalistic in style."
The McColl Family Fellowships, which were established in 1999, are endowed by Dr. Robert W. McColl and his wife, Suzanne Ecke McColl. The fellowship consists of round-trip airfare to any place in the world of the candidate’s choosing. The candidate must secure funding for other expenses from other sources. The only obligation of the Fellow is to write an article based on the visit abroad that is suitable for publication in FOCUS on Geography magazine and that is submitted to the editor within six months of returning from the trip. 2008
The Department of
Geography & Anthropology
KREWE DU MONDE
enters its first float ever in the Baton Rouge Southdowns Mardi Gras parade February 1, 2008. Click here to view video.(Video courtesy WAFB9 and Jay Grymes, Chief Meteorologist. ©WAFB9)
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