Dr. Richard Zettler

Biography

Richard L. Zettler is an archaeologist specializing in Mesopotamia, which occupies modern Iraq and Syria. He received his MA and PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 1984. His work focuses on Nippur and Umm al-Hafriyat in southern Iraq, as well as Üç Tepe in the Hamrin Basin. He directed excavations at Tell es-Sweyhat, an Early Bronze Age site with an occupation spanning a millennium BCE along the upper Euphrates in Syria, from 1989 to 2007. Zettler has taught at the University of California, Berkeley and has been at the University of Pennsylvania since 1986. His research interests include urbanism, socio-economic organization of complex societies, and the integration of archaeological and documentary data. He has published interpretative studies and excavation reports, such as on the Ur III Temple of Inanna at Nippur and the Tell es-Sweyhat site. Currently, he is working on the publication of the excavations at the Temple of Inanna, conducted in the 1950s and early 1960s, and his own excavations at Tell es-Sweyhat. In addition, he serves as Associate Curator-in-Charge of the Penn Museum’s Near East Section, which houses over 100,000 artifacts from excavations in the Middle East, and co-curated the successful traveling exhibit 'Treasures of the Royal Tombs of Ur.'

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