In June, Temple archeologists began excavating the buried secrets of Timbuctoo, a New Jersey community founded by freed blacks and escaped slaves nearly 200 years ago. David Orr, an archeologist and professor of anthropology at Temple, believes that the foundations of a whole village of perhaps 18 houses and a church dating back to the 1820s lie beneath layers of dirt. The site has the potential to be a very important find in African-American history, Orr said in a front page story. "Timbuctoo is great in a larger context because it lasted, some of it, into the 20th century," he said. "It also has a very large descendant community, so ethnographically it is important."