Panopticonism, Pines and POWs: Applying Conflict Landscape Tools to the Archaeology of Internment

The military terrain analysis system KOCOA (Key Terrain, Observation, Cover/concealment, Obstacles, and Avenues of approach; also OAKOC or OCOKA) was developed as part of the burgeoning discipline of military science around the start of the American Civil War. It is now part of the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program’s survey methodology, was introduced to conflict archaeology by Scott and McFeaters and Scott and Bleed and has been used as a tool for predicting battlefield locations. However, it has potential applications beyond battlefields. This paper explores how applying KOCOA elucidates conflict landscapes of power, dominance, and control. An analysis of the internment landscape of Camp Lawton, an 1864 Confederate POW camp, with KOCOA, will highlight how principles of dominance were applied, and how concealment and obstacles actively disrupted the ‘unequal gaze’ of Foucault. But also how KOCOA functions in determining the grammar of space for elements of the constructed environment of a military complex; with aspects like defence and observation of equal weight with domination and control. KOCOA delivers the visualization of these abstracts within a GIS environment, and thus guides excavation and interpretation.