Tom Matijasic, professor of history at Big Sandy Community and Technical College, was recently awarded an invitation to participate in a Landmarks in American History Workshop sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The focus of the workshop was the pre-history of the Ohio Valley. Matijasic joined nineteen other community college instructors from across the country for the weeklong event hosted by the Ohio Historical Society. Participants were taken to a number of pre-historic Native American sites including Flint Ridge, the Newark Earthworks, Fort Ancient, Sunwatch Village and Serpent Mound. Lectures were given on the early domestication of plants, village life, flint knapping, and the astronomical alignments that have recently been discovered at several Hopewell and Fort Ancient sites.

The Landmarks Workshops are designed to allow community college instructors an opportunity to enhance their knowledge of American history in order to introduce their students to the latest scholarship in the field. Last year, Matijasic participated in a Landmarks Workshop on steel making in Cleveland hosted by the Western Reserve Historical Society.