Introduction

Over the last 50 years, archaeologists have received funding in the United States and Canada to investigate numerous battlefields, forts/encampments, and shipwrecks related to major military events. In fact, there has never been a lack of public or archaeological support for military sites. The book highlights the recent interest in the War of 1812, and demonstrates how the analysis of archaeological material can provide new insights into, and perhaps reconstruct narratives about, this 200-year-old conflict. Perhaps the best settings to tell the War of 1812 stories are within the walls of extant stone and brick fortifications. Military archaeologists trained in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century material culture are familiar with the brass buttons lost on battlefields, the munitions fired from muskets, and even a bent piece of lead that once held a piece of flint. Indeed, finding the subtle signature of an encampment occupied for a few days, an hour-long battle.