Ralph K. Pedersen
Dr. Pedersen is currently the Whittlesey Chair Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Archaeology at the American University of Beirut.
Dr. Pedersen holds a doctorate in Anthropology from the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University.
He has been a team member of the excavation of the Bronze Age shipwreck at Uluburun, Turkey; directed the 1991 excavation of a 17th- century wreck at Monte Cristi, Dominican Republic; surveyed in Bahrain; excavated a 1500-year-old shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea; surveyed shipwrecks off New York's Long Island as the Archaeological Director of the Institute for Marine Archaeology; and served as an Associate Director of India's Kadakkarapally Boat Project. He has been a Research Associate with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology since 1992. In 2004 he conducted an underwater survey at Tell el-Burak in Lebanon, and in 2007 in the waters off the early Bronze Age tell at Fadous-Kfarabida for the American University of Beirut.
His dissertation entitled "The Boatbuilding Sequence in the Gilgamesh Epic and the Sewn Boat Relation" examines and reinterprets the construction of the Ark of the Deluge.
He holds a BA in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and an MA in Anthropology/Nautical Archaeology from Texas A&M.
