Ralph K. Pedersen

Background

About Ralph K. Pedersen

Ralph K. Pedersen is the founder and president of The Red Sea Institute for Anthropological Research. Dr. Pedersen is an archaeologist specializing in the seafaring and cultural heritage of the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Gulf, and Indian Ocean. He has conducted archaeological projects in Lebanon, Bahrain, Turkey, and in Saudi Arabia. He has served as the DAAD Gastdozent für Nautische Archäologie at Philipps-Universität Marburg, 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. He currently teaches online courses in the Department of History at Southwestern A/G University. Dr. Pedersen has been a member of 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. He has conducted surveys in Saudi Arabia at Jeddah in 2012-2013, in which two shipwrecks from the Roman and Byzantine periods were found. In 2023, he was the field director for underwater cultural heritage for Paleowest/Project NEOM in Saudi Arabia, a survey that located several underwater and liminal sites from the Late Roman and Ottoman eras. He has been a Research Associate with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology since 1992. He is also registered with the Register of Professional Archaeologists. Dr. Pedersen has been the recipient of numerous grants for research and teaching, and his research has been published in leading journals. A number of his publications can be found here: https://independent.academia.edu/RalphPedersen2