Battles often change the course of history. Yet, there is little interest for the investigation, the management and the opening-up of battlefields dating from before World War I. Mostly no visible traces of the battle have been left behind, apart from possible memorials. Therefore this kind of heritage is highly threatened. The Ename Centre for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation is a co-founder of the European network ESTOC and starts up an investigation of the 300 years old battlefield of Oudenaarde. Thus is focusses on the plight of premodern battlefields.
The Battle of Oudenaarde in 1708 played a decisive role in a long-term European conflict that dragged on from 1701 till 1714. 180,000 soldiers confronted one another on the plain between Eine and Mullem. There were 20,000 casualties on one day.
Even after 300 years, mapping the archaeological finds (such as musket bullets) provides an insight into the development of the battle. The British Battlefields Trust is the European trendsetter in that field of research. Scientists from the Trust have used their years of experience to fine-tune their methods of investigation and one of their teams visited Oudenaarde in 2007 to conduct an archaeological investigation of this historic battlefield. They exclusively use metal detectors to search for e.g. musket bullets. The coordinates of each find are meticulously mapped via GPS. The analysis of the bullets and other objects such as buttons and buckles and the investigation of the spread patterns help to understand what happened 300 years ago.
The Ename Center will continue the research for the next couple of years in collaboration with different institutional partners. However, it would not be possible to do so without the direct involvement of amateur archaeologists.
Flemish Minister Dirk Van Mechelen considered the theme and the approach to be innovative for Flanders and honoured us with the approval of a subsidy with the VCM Contact Forum for Heritage Societies 10 x 10,000 project call. The Ename Centre now can document the battlefield investigation with a dvd and a manual that will appeal to a broad public.
The Ename Center also plays a pioneering role in Europe as co-founder of the research network ESTOC that stands for European Studies of Terrains of Conflict. This network is an initiative of John and Patricia Carman of the University of Birmingham and was officially established in Ename in 2006. It brings the predicament of pre-modern battlefields under the attantion of European heritage professionals, politicians and policy makers.
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