FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 Local Archaeology of the Missouri/Kansas Border War Gains International Attention

 Bates County, Missouri – February 6, 2010 – Archaeology Magazine, a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America with a national and international distribution, will be featuring an article in its upcoming issue about local archaeologist, Ann M. Raab, and her work on Border War sites in Bates County, Missouri.

 This issue of Archaeology Magazine (March/April 2010) will hit the stands on February 16, 2010.

 Bates County was the scene of an event unprecedented in United States history, yet this epic chapter of the American Civil War remains surprisingly obscure to public and scholarly audiences. In 1863, Union General Thomas Ewing ordered the effective depopulation of four Missouri counties south of and including Kansas City (Jackson, Cass, Vernon and Bates), with his now infamous General Order No. 11.

 The Missouri-Kansas Border War and General Order 11 were like no other American war. This was total war; blurring distinctions between military combatants and civilians; leaving no one safe from violence, regardless of their political loyalties.

 General Order 11 was a severe measure for all of the affected counties, but it was uniquely destructive for Bates County. By fall of 1863, essentially all of the buildings in the county had been burned; all crops and livestock confiscated or destroyed; anything useful as war materiel lay in ruins. 

 Ann M. Raab, PhD candidate in Archaeology at the University of Kansas, and a long-time resident of Missouri, has been engaged in archaeological fieldwork in Bates County since October of 2007. In 2008 and 2009, she conducted two archaeological field schools, co-sponsored by the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Bates County Historical Society, which involved college students from institutions in both Missouri and Kansas.

 Archaeological research in the Bates County area offers great potential for understanding not only the destructiveness of the Civil War era, but also how the survivors of the Border War were able to recover.

 The article in Archaeology Magazine highlights the importance of these events in our nation’s history, and the potential for more archaeological research in the area.

 Contact:

Ann M. Raab

raaba@umkc.edu

612 Edward St.

Weston, MO  64098

(816) 377-3472