![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny
Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Douglas D. ScottMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of the delightful things about used bookstores is that sometimes you find something you thought you'd never see. This book is one of those.
This book is the compiled results of the 1983-85 archaeological investigations at the two sites of the Battle of the Little Bighorn: the field where Custer and all of his men were killed and the hill where Reno and Benteen (mostly Benteen) kept their men together through a two-day siege. The archaeologists go over everything they found: human bones, animal bones, bullets, cartridge cases, buttons, tin cans, spurs, arrowheads, pocket knives ..., and they wring every last drop of information out of their finds. (One of the authors, Richard Fox, would go on to write one of my favorite books about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle, in which he uses the bullets and cartridge cases to trace the course of the battle; two others, Douglas Scott and Melissa Connor, with a third author, P. Willey, wrote They Died with Custer, about the human bones.) They discuss a number of mysteries and theories about the battle and bring their evidence to bear. Extractor failure is not supported as a major factor in the defeat; there is no evidence for mass suicide. The men who may or may not be buried in Deep Ravine, the archaeologists conclude, have been buried so deeply by the vagaries of erosion and deposition that metal detectors can't see them and the excavations they were able to do couldn't go deep enough to find them.
This is an academic book and is concommitantly dry, but it's an excellent snapshot of what archaeology does and a valuable factual perspective on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
View all my reviews
