Fredrik Hiebert

Fredrik Hiebert has studied ancient trade across Asia for more than 20 years. He first became interested in archaeology while studying art in Paris, and he joined a French expedition investigating ancient seafaring between Mesopotamia and India. He completed his doctoral dissertation in anthropology at Harvard University, documenting a 4,000-year-old civilization in the sands of Central Asia. Hiebert currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds the Robert H. Dyson chair of Near Eastern archaeology as an assistant professor and assistant curator in the museum.

Hiebert, 42, is a contributing investigator on Robert Ballard's Black Sea Program. He also founded the Black Sea Trade Project, the first archaeological expedition to combine land and deep-water archaeology in a single research project. Five years of land exploration along the Black Sea coast at Sinop, Turkey, have identified more than 170 ancient archaeological sites, documenting the importance of ancient sea trade in the Black Sea.

Among other honors, Hiebert received the Chairman's Award from the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration in 1998.