Rediscovering an American Victory at Red Bank Battlefield, New Jersey

FAIN: ZZ-310580-26

Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH 03755-1808)
Raquel Fleskes (Project Director: October 2025 to present)

An archaeological and digital outreach project about the Revolutionary War Battle of Red Bank. Following the 2022 discovery of a mass grave of Hessian soldiers at the site of Fort Mercer, this project would continue Ancient DNA analysis to tell a fuller story of the battle and would develop a website for public outreach to include text, historical maps, images, and the results of scientific findings. 

This project investigates the global dimensions of the 1777 Battle of Red Bank, a strategically important American victory against Hessian soldiers serving with the British during the Philadelphia Campaign. This project will use new methods in ancient DNA, grounded within a humanistic archaeological and historical research framework, to reconstruct the lives of the Hessian soldiers who fought and died there. The results of this research will be integrated into a digital humanities website that will present the history of the battle through narrative text, historical maps, and illustrative quotations, and visualize the newly generated scientific findings using an interactive 3D map. This website will serve as an educational and outreach resource for K–12 students and the general public. Overall, this project employs novel interdisciplinary methods within a humanistic framework to foster public engagement surrounding the Battle of Red Bank during America’s semiquincentennial anniversary.