Grim look at Civil War surgery unearthed by new pit of limbs, bodies

Enlarge / Erin Godwin (Field Technician, Louis Berger Group) excavates an amputated limb. (credit: Kate D. Sherwood, Smithsonian Institution.)

Eleven amputated limbs, two nearly complete skeletons, and scattered artifacts uncovered from a shallow pit at Virginia's Manassas National Battlefield Park are unearthing rare and grim glimpses of Civil War surgery.

The surgeon's burial pit is the first of its kind to be discovered at a Civil War battlefield, the National Park Service announced this week.

Experts from the NPS and the Smithsonian Institution have determined that remains date back to August 1862, the time of the Second Battle of Manassas (also referred to as the Second Battle of Bull Run by Union Forces). The pit was likely at the site of a field hospital, set up to tend to the thousands of wounded following the multi-day battle.

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