During the summer of 2010 the University of Connecticut conducted a Battlefield Archaeological Field School where university students learned and worked alongside museum archaeologists at Pequot War battlefield sites in Mystic, Connecticut.

During their stay, the field school students not only learned battlefield and traditional archaeological field methods, they had the chance to meet and teach other students from afar. While working at the site of Mystic Fort, the field school students shared their new found archaeological knowledge with teenagers from the American southwest and local students from Massachusetts involved in an educational program called Pecos Pathways. This proved a unique and wonderful experience for all involved, one for the memory books.

Screening and searching for Artifacts in Mystic

The Pecos Pathways is an educational program created out as a result of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), an act of civil rights legislation passed in 1990. As a result of this law, museums and other organizations were required to consult with Native American tribes about human remains and culturally important objects that were stored in collections.

The Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Pecos National Historical Park housed collections from a 1915-1929 excavation of Pecos Pueblo by archaeologist A.V. Kidder and therefore consulted with the direct descendants of Pecos Pueblo – Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico. After repatriation under NAGPRA was completed, it was decided by all parties that the relationship between the three groups, cultivated by a decade of consultations, should continue through cooperative education of their students. Out of this grew the Pecos Pathways, where students from each of the areas (Andover, Jemez and Pecos) travel together for three weeks each summer, learning about the history of the people of Jemez and Pecos as well as the archaeology of both the Southwest and New England.