Ralph K. Pedersen Biography

Ralph K. Pedersen is the founder and president of The Red Sea Institute for Anthropological Research, based in Lansing, Michigan USA.

He has previously served as the DAAD Gastdozent für Nautische Archäologie at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where he created a curriculum in nautical archaeology and lectured and and ran seminars in the topics of ancient seafaring in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and related areas. Prior to this, he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in Anthropology and Knapp Chair in Liberal Arts at the University of San Diego, and the Whittlesey Chair Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Archaeology at the American University of Beirut. 

Professor Pedersen has been involved in the excavation of the Bronze Age shipwreck at Uluburun, Turkey; served as daily field director for the 1991 excavation of a 17th- century wreck at Monte Cristi, Dominican Republic under USD Anthropology Associate Professor Jerome Lynn Hall; surveyed underwater in Bahrain; excavated a 1500-year-old shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea; surveyed shipwrecks off New York's Long Island, and served as an Associate Director of India's Kadakkarapally Boat Project, which involves a thousand-year-old ship found under a coconut grove. 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. In the spring of 2012, he was a consultant for the analysis of BEY 194, a site in Beirut claimed by some to be a Phoenician Port, but which was determined to be a quarry.  Also in 2012 he and colleagues from Marburg and Munich launched a coastal survey in the area of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Professor Pedersen has been a Research Associate with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology since 1992.

Ralph Pedersen holds a doctorate in Anthropology from the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University. 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 in light of archaeological and ethnographic evidence in Arabia, Africa and India.

In addition, Professor Pedersen 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.

Specialties

Nautical Archaeology, Near Eastern Archaeology, Maritime Anthropology