Background:

The 1777 battles of Saratoga were the first major decisive American victory of the Revolutionary War and the first-ever surrender of the British Army. Known as the turning point of the war, the victory bolstered the spirits of American troops and swayed the French to support the cause of American independence.

In 2019, AVAR veterans conducted the first archaeological fieldwork ever attempted on the site of the Second Battle of Saratoga with supervision and training provided by archaeologists from the Northeast Region Archeology Program. The project was completed in conjunction with the National Park Service and the American Battlefield Trust. In 2021, our vets will continue the methodical metal detector survey under the guidance of Advanced Metal Detecting for the Archaeologist (AMDA), but we also aim to excavate!