Biography

Joseph (Seppi) Lehner is an anthropological archaeologist who specializes in early complex societies in the Near East. Seppi finished his PhD at the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and is a past Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor Fellow at the University of Tübingen and a Senior Fellow at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations at Koç University in Istanbul. By adapting and developing new methods in materials science and geochemistry, his work explores early economies, trade, and technology, in particular the innovations and development of metallurgy. After starting his first field work in the North American Arctic, Seppi has worked across the Near East, Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean, and India. He is a co-director of the Kerkenes Project (Turkey) based at UCF, co-director of the Cape Gelidonya Metal Cargo Project (Turkey), and the metals specialist at the German Archaeological Institute expedition to Boğazköy-Hattuša (Turkey). Dr. Lehner also works in the Sultanate of Oman as a specialist with the Archaeological Water Histories of Oman to document and survey over 5,000 years of copper and bronze production and trade between Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia.