Field Notes	Volume 49 Number 1, January/February 1996

Indian Village Found
An entire Caddo village dating between ca. A.D. 150 and 1450 has been excavated in northeastern Texas on land targeted for coal strip-mining. Some 42 circular dwellings and a central ceremonial plaza at the Oak Village site have been identified.

Moroccan Tooth Find
A 400,000-year-old hominid tooth has been uncovered at a site in Casablanca. French and Moroccan archaeologists found the tooth in association with tools and animal remains, including those of antelope, lion, and bear.

Pacific Coast Basketry
Basketry fragments found in a cave on the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara, California, have been dated to 9,000 years ago, twice as old as the oldest basketry previously discovered on the Pacific coast of North America, according to University of Oregon scholars.

Troy Finds
A late twelfth-century B.C. bronze seal inscribed with Luwian hieroglyphs is the first evidence of writing from Bronze Age Troy. It bears on one side the name of a man, identified as a scribe, and on the other the name of a woman, possibly his wife. A bronze figurine similar to Hittite representations of a god holding a weapon or thunderbolt was also found.

Colosseum Restoration
A three-year, $25 million restoration of the Colosseum is under way. Conservators will drain waterlogged cellars, reopen imperial conduits, clear the arena of vegetation, shore up the structure, replace fallen masonry, and clean the monument.

© 1996 by the Archaeological Institute of America archive.archaeology.org/9601/newsbriefs/fieldnotes.html