The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center continues its endeavors in the "Battlefields of the Pequot War" Project, funded by the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program. A new website was launched sharing information, photos and a blog (pequotwar.org), and the Museum was awarded a planning grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program to study Saybrook Fort in Old Saybrook. At Fort Saybrook more than a dozen discrete battles, ambushes, and actions took place as part of the Pequot War, and this project will identify areas for future archaeological testing, develop a preservation advocacy partnership, and educate the public about this important event in American history.

This summer, university students from across the country participated in the University of Connecticut's Battlefield Archaeology Field School and worked alongside archaeologists from the Museum in Mystic, where metal detection and archaeology continued. During the field season, volunteers from the Yankee Territory Coinshooters assisted in metal detection and the recovery of over a dozen confirmed Pequot War era battlefield artifacts found at both Porter's Rocks, where English and Native troops camped the night before the battle at Mystic Fort, and at Pequot Hill, the site of Mystic Fort. Archaeologists have been utilizing new GIS/GPS technology to plot battlefield artifacts uncovered. Documentation research still continues to uncover information about veterans, narratives and authors of the Pequot War.

Plans for fall and winter 2010-11 include continuing battlefield archaeology at Pequot Hill and research and planning into Saybrook Fort. For more information about the project, please visit pequotwar.org. To contact the project, please call (860) 396-6868 or email Dr. Kevin McBride at: kmcbride@mptn.org.