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The Maumee Mirror (Maumee, OH)
08-24-95
The Fallen Timbers battlefield, pinpointed this summer following the recent dig in Maumee, has drawn local, regional, and national coverage.
Now, Fallen Timbers has gone international.
Heidelberg College went on-line recently with the Fallen Timbers Battlefield Archaeological Project site, or "home page," located on the Internet's World-Wide Web (WWW).
Any user worldwide who has computer access to the WWW can connect to this location and examine every phase of the project, conducted over 10 years by Heidelberg professor Dr. G. Michael Pratt.
"This project is an attempt to share the findings of the Fallen Timbers Archaeological Project with the concerned citizens of northwest Ohio and other interested viewers, academic and casual, around the globe," according to Jamie Abel, Heidelberg director of information.
With collaboration and blessings from Pratt, Abel designed the Fallen Timbers home page with the help of the college's computer science department.
"Using the Internet to distribute the information about the project was Jamie's idea, but one I fully support," Pratt said. "The Internet is a great way to share these significant historical findings quickly and with the widest audience.
Web users can read about the various phases of the Fallen Timbers project, including documents from a National Park Service site investigation, Pratt's keynote address for the Fallen Timbers commemoration in 1994, his proposal and preliminary report following this summer's dig, a pictorial sample of the recovered artifacts, various press reports, and a biography of the archaeologist.
Under the auspices of the Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor Inc., Pratt and about 150 volunteers descended on the site in June. In two weeks, workers uncovered more than 300 battle-related artifacts, including 39 Legion of the U.S. Army buttons, a socket bayonet, a musket flint, and 271 rifle and musket shot of varying caliber.
While politicians and preservationists are working to find common ground on the fate of the site, Pratt has taken the artifacts to his laboratory at Heidelberg College to clean, photograph, study, and catalog. Pratt has plans to develop and place on the Internet a lesson plan to help teachers explain the importance of the battle to their students.
"Many people don't understand how significant this battle was in the history of this country," he said. "With two embarrassing losses to the United States' credit, Wayne's campaign probably would have been the last to this area if he had lost. This ground most probably, then, would be a part of Canada today."
With assistance from Heidelberg's computer science department, Abel has listed the address of the Fallen Timbers home page on several "resource servers" around the world. The home page address is already listed on "Archnet," an archaeology resource page at the University of Connecticut. It is likely to find its way soon onto some other Internet sites such as "What's New?" or "New Sites."
To reach the Fallen Timbers Archaeology Project home page via Heidelberg's WWW server, use a web browser to connect to: http://www2.heidelberg.edu/Fallen Timbers/ . A special "JPEG" viewer also may be required to view some larger formats of the photographs.
NOTICE: This article, which may be copyrighted, is reprinted with specific permission granted to Heidelberg College. Further reprint rights must be secured from the publisher.
Heidelberg College / Office of College Relations
/ webmaster@heidelberg.edu