Answers to what really happened during Lt. Col. "General" George Armstrong Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn might finally be clarified at a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAHuntsville) lecture conducted by renowned forensic archaeologist Melissa Connor.
Connor's talk "Fields of Fire and Men with Custer: Archaeological Perspectives on the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn," will be presented on Wednesday, Sept. 29 at 7:30 p.m., in the Chan Auditorium located in the Business Administration Building.
More than 134 years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn and numerous accounts of what really happened, one thing is irrefutable: Lt. Col. Custer and approximately 210 soldiers from the Seventh Calvary Regiment were slaughtered by several bands of Indian warriors and war leaders that included Crazy Horse, Chief Gall and Sitting Bull.
A range fire at the Little Bighorn battlefield in 1983 cleared the terrain of brush and grass, and made it possible for Conner and her associates to conduct a thorough archaeological investigation of the site. Their inquiry continued through 2005 with some fascinating revelations and was published in two books Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of Little Bighorn and They Died with Custer: Soldiers' Bones from the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Connor will share those discoveries and answer many more questions during her lecture at UAHuntsville.
On the basis of the evidence presented in the books, the archaeological team discovered:
- what kinds of weapons were used against the cavalry
- where most of the men fought, how they died, and what happened to their bodies at the time of or after death
- the remains and grave of one of Custer's scouts, Mitch Boyer, was identified
Connor is an associate professor and director of the Forensic Science Program at Nebraska Wesleyan University where she teaches courses in the Fundamentals of Crime Scene Investigation as well as Forensic Science and Forensic Archaeology. Her additional publications include The Role and Future of Archaeology in Forensic Sciences; In Archaeologists as Forensic Investigators: Defining the Role; Post-Burial Disturbance of Graves in Bosnia and Herzegovina; In Forensic Taphonomy: The Post-Mortem Fate of Human Remains and Mass Grave Investigation.
Conner received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in anthropology from The University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her Ph.D. in anthropology and geography from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The lecture is free and open to the public. The Archaeology Institute of America (AIA) North Alabama Society chapter sponsors the talk. UAHuntsville's Dr. Lillian Joyce, chairperson and associate professor of Art and Art History is the president of AIA.
Source: WAFF48 News [September 07, 2010]