Mark Schwartz received his PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University. His research focused on trade between the early city-states of Mesopotamia and the emerging complex societies of Anatolia in the fourth millennium B.C.  He has worked on various excavations in the Middle East. As assistant director of the Hirbemerdon Tepe Archaeological in Diyarbakir, Turkey he involved students in research and is currently working on the final publication of the excavations. At present he is involved in inter-departmental collaborative work using ROVs to study shipwrecks in the Great Lakes.  At Grand Valley, he teaches courses on the archaeology of the Near East as well as general courses concerning anthropology and archaeology.