Dr. Glenn Schwartz

Glenn M. Schwartz is Whiting Professor of Archaeology, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He is a Near Eastern archaeologist who has directed excavations in Syria and Iraq and conducts research on the emergence and early trajectory of complex societies in Syria and Mesopotamia. Schwartz received his PhD from Yale University in 1982.

At Tell al-Raqa'i, Syria, Schwartz excavated a small rural community that existed during the onset of urbanization, investigating the role of villages in early urban societies. His subsequent fieldwork at Tell Umm el-Marra in northwestern Syria focused on the study of an Early Bronze Age elite mortuary complex and concentrated on issues of funerary ritual, sacrifice and elite ideologies. His most recent fieldwork project is based at the second-millennium BC urban Bronze Age site of Kurd Qaburstan south of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.


Among other books, Schwartz co-authored, with Peter Akkermans, The Archaeology of Syria: From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Urban Societies, ca. 16,000-300 BC (Cambridge University Press, 2003).