<p>Schwartz discussed his favorite dig sites and the origins of his long rooted interest in Middle East (Johns Hopkins Newsletter)</p>
<p>When most other eight-year-olds were busy playing with cars or train sets, Glenn Schwartz, professor of archeology, was knee-deep in his older brother’s history book, engrossed in the world of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. The professor took a moment to sit down with The News-Letter to talk about his digs at Umm el-Marr in Syria, as well as the origin of his interest in Near Eastern Studies.</p>
<p>News-Letter (N-L): So, to start off, can you tell me a little bit about where you’re from?</p>
<p>Glenn Schwartz (GS): I’m from Baltimore. I’m a native. I grew up near Mount Washington and went to public school here and was always aware of Johns Hopkins and also that they had a department of Near Eastern studies, even back then. I was interested in Near Eastern studies and I was interested in archeology and they didn’t have an archeologist on the faculty and I remember thinking, even back then, “They need an archeologist and maybe they could hire me.” It was just an amazing fluke that it happened like that.</p>
<p>N-L: Where did you do your graduate and undergraduate work?</p>
<p>GS: I went to Yale for both undergraduate and graduate work. I had applied to three colleges; I was interested in ancient Near Eastern studies and archeology, so I picked three that I knew were strong in it. One of them was Hopkins, actually. My mother really wanted me to come here, but I didn’t want to stay home so I went to Yale instead.</p>
<p>N-L: What got your interest peaked in Near Eastern studies and archeology?</p>
<p>GS: It started very early for me. I was eight years old, even. My older brother was in junior high school and he was taking history, and in his textbook, the first chapter was about the ancient near East, about the Babylonians and Assyrians and that sort of thing. I started reading it and thought it was fascinating. I don’t know why. Another thing, there was a movie I saw on television called The Egyptian which was about life in ancient Egypt in the 14th century B.C. It was a Hollywood extravaganza. The book The Egyptian had been a best seller in 1948 or something. I didn’t realize it was a bad movie, but it was a very serious attempt to represent life in the ancient world realistically. I was just fascinated with the idea that there were these people who lived so long ago and had such sophisticated societies and such interesting culture and were so different from us and yet so similar to us.</p>
<p>So, that’s how I got interested and I started reading, and it became my hobby, or just my thing.</p>
<p>N-L: Have you been on many digs?</p>
<p>GS: I started going on digs when I was in college. The first one was in Connecticut just near Yale and then I went to Arizona and then Iran.</p>
<p>And that’s when I started Near Eastern archeology. I thought that I would probably end up being a specialist in Iranian archeology. There were a lot of American archeologists working in Iran. It was kind of an archeological paradise. And Iran was fantastic. But then my mentor both in undergrad and grad school decided to switch from Iran to Syria. This was when I was in graduate school. So, I went with him. It turned out to be a very wise move because Iran of course, like a year later, came the revolution, and Iran was inaccessible to American archeologists so he made a very judicious choice by switching his base of operations to Syria.</p>
<p>And that’s where I’ve worked ever since except for the occasional detour into places like Turkey and Egypt.</p>
<p>N-L: What was your favorite site to do a dig?</p>
<p>GS: I like where I’m digging now, really. It has pretty much most of what I’m interested in. It’s a site that was occupied over a long period of time. There are many different issues that you can study because each period has its own unique issues to deal with and it’s in a part of Syria that I didn’t know before I started working there. So it was something new. And it’s a fairly large site, which means there’s more diversity at the site and there’s a lot of room to operate in. And it’s near the city of Aleppo, which is one of my favorite cities in the world. So, that’s pretty nice too. All things considered, there aren’t many other places I can think of that I want to dig.</p>
<p>N-L: Why is Aleppo your favorite city?</p>
<p>GS: Well, it’s large and it’s full of life. And still has a kind of old-fashioned charm to it. And indeed a lot of historic architecture. The city is dominated by a citadel, a fortified citadel, like a castle on top of a mound which you can see form all around.</p>
<p>The covered market place, the Suq, right below it is also very old. You just get the impression of being in a situation where time has stopped. It’s as if you’re back centuries. It’s fun, but aside from all that, it’s a very exciting city, with a lot of interesting things happening and a lot of interesting people.</p>
<p>N-L: How many languages can you speak?</p>
<p>GS: You’re into numbers. How many digs, how many languages. I mean, I can speak to varying degrees a number of different languages. French, German, Arabic. That’s three. I can read, well, I know a little bit of Dutch. I can read Italian, sort of. And then the ancient languages that I studied when I was in graduate school and before.</p>
<p>So, Acadian, Sumerian, Aramaic and Uquridic. To be a scholar of the ancient Near East, even if you area a philologist, which I’m not, that is a text person, it’s still useful to know, to be familiar with the ancient sources, the textual sources to know something about them and to be able to read them to a degree. And you have to be able to read the modern languages that scholars write in.</p>
<p>So, in our field, that’s English, French and German. And of course if you’re working in the Near East, you have to speak to the people that are there now, which means Arabic where I am or Turkish; I learned a little bit of Persian when I was in Iran, but not too much.</p>
<p>N-L: Are you the only archeologist on staff?</p>
<p>GS: I’m not the only digger. Betsy Bryan, who’s my colleague in Near Eastern studies has an important excavation in Egypt. Her research is more focused on art, art history. And then there’s Professor Shapiro in the classics department who does Greek archeology. But again, he’s very oriented toward art history also. I’m more of a mainstream archeologist, if you will, who focuses on the more mundane aspects of physical remains, like pottery and architecture and plant remains and animal bones and settlement patterns, just the whole nine yards. I should also mention Professor Lisa DeLeonardis, who is also an expert in the archeology of Peru. I have compatriots in other departments, yes. </p>
<p>N-L: What research are you doing currently? Do you have any future digs planned?</p>
<p>GS: I’ve been digging at the same site in Syria since 1994. As I mentioned, it’s a big site. Despite the fact that we’ve been digging there a long time, we’ve sill just metaphorically scratched the surface. Excavating there, we have discovered a remarkable complex of tombs that have seemed to belong to the local kings and their families.</p>
<p>They’re rich and full of evidence of all sorts of bizarre rituals that have not been observed before. There’s a lot more to do just in that complex. There are all sorts of other parts of the site that we haven’t investigated yet.</p>
<p>N-L: How often do you travel?</p>
<p>GS: When we go, it’s during the summer, so, May through July usually. Some summers I don’t go. It’s not necessarily every year. Two years out of three is our pattern. I do hope to be going this year.</p>
<p>N-L: Do you bring students with you? Are they usually undergraduate or graduate students?</p>
<p>GS: Both. I haven’t brought undergraduates for a few years. But I think it might be time to resume that practice. At first I was a little bit leery of doing it because I thought Syria might be a bit too challenging. You know, the culture is so different and physically it’s not easy. It’s really hot, and the work it pretty hard. The first time I brought undergraduates, the two undergraduates were great. They had no problems. The undergraduates I’ve taken since then were really great. It may be time to do that again.</p>
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