For more than a decade, Darlene Brooks Hedstrom, associate professor of history, has studied monastic archeology in Egypt, taking students and alumni on digs in an attempt to bring international attention to one of the largest Christian settlements in the Middle East. In June, Brooks Hedstrom, who serves as archeological director of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project-North under the executive direction of Stephen Davis (Yale), unearthed a rare treasure with the assistance of Jacquelyn Nair ’09, Whitney Yount ’10, Jacque Cooper ’10 and Ashley Klingelhoefer ’11. The team discovered a gold Umayyad coin during an excavation at the Monastery of St. John the Little in Wadi Natrun, Egypt. The coin dates back to the year 103 of Higra (721 AD).