Double-spout and bridge water vessels are common in many South American cultures. Although used as far back as the Machallila culture (1430-830 BP) of Ecuador, [1] it is most often associated with the Paracas and Nazca cultures of southern Peru. The Paracas culture (700 BCE-1 CE) can be split into two subcultures, the Cavernas and the Necropolis. The Cavernas subculture was named thusly because...

Much attention has been paid to what occurred on the extreme left flank of the Union army on July 2; the dramatic battle for Little Round Top. Comparatively little public attention goes to Culp's Hill, which represented the extreme right of the Union line. This hill was actually far more important to the integrity of the Union position. Culp's Hill represented the hook of the famous "fishhook." A Confederate force holding it would have potentially rendered the Union line untenable; the...

It seems that Robert E. Lee gets a lot of bashing for Gettysburg not so much because of Pickett's charge, but because he didn't listen to his "Old War Horse" namely his second-in-command General James Longstreet. When Lee contrived the idea for the attack through the center of Meade's army, Longstreet said to him that his idea was horrible. Lee didn't listen to him, ordered the attack and it resulted in failure. But it seems that Lee gets a lot of bashing from historians for not listening...

]

As Salah rightly noted in his thread on Darius Couch, there are overrated and underrated generals in the American Civil War. The most criminally underrated of them all, in my view, is Samuel Ryan Curtis, victor of Pea Ridge and Westport. Curtis was born in 1805, and graduated from West Point in 1831. He soon resigned from the army to work as a civil engineer, and was also admitted to the bar. He served...

The Battle of Westport was the largest engagement west of the Mississippi River in the Civil War, sometimes referred to as the "Gettysburg of the West". In September, Sterling Price had launched an invasion of Missouri. All his units were mounted, as the infantry units intended to support him had been sent elsewhere, turning the invasion into more of a grand cavalry raid. Price called his force the Army of Missouri. On September 27th, Price suffered horrific casualties for no gain...