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Large-scale research has been underway for some years at Étaples-sur-Mer and Camiers, in the Pas-de-Calais, on the camps that saw the birth of Napoleon’s first Grande Armée, composed of the troops set to invade England. This research, initially preventative but subsequently programmed, is part of the currently very active world of the archaeology of modern-era conflicts. This is a comprehensive archaeology, bringing together and comparing all the existing documentary sources, without exception. Yet, rich and diverse though written sources may be—military archives, correspondence, first-hand accounts, etc.—, they remain partial and biased. Similarly incomplete are the “archives of the ground,” in other words, the archaeological “document” given its full importance in the writing, reading, or reinterpreting of history. However, when the latter are combined with the historian’s traditional sources, they open the way for a new, anthropological approach in which the condition of the unknown soldier, not grand military history, is given centre stage.