Bio

Shelley Wachsmann was born in Canada and immigrated to Israel in 1968. He earned all three of his degrees in Near Eastern Archaeology from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology: BA (1974), MA (1984) and Ph.D. (1990). From 1976 to 1989 Wachsmann served as the Inspector of Underwater Antiquities for the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums. During that time he was directly responsible for the nautical heritage of Israel. He carried out numerous underwater archaeological surveys and excavations in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Sea of Galilee. Among the projects he directed were the excavation of a Late Bronze Age cargo off the Carmel coast, probe excavations of a late fifth century BC wreck near Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, a sixth century AD Byzantine wreck off Dor and the search for cannon jettisoned by Napoleon during his retreat from Acco in 1799. Beginning in 1990, Wachsmann became Meadows Visiting Assistant Professor of Biblical Archeology in the Nautical Archaeology Program, Texas A&M University. In 1993 this Chair was converted to a tenure-track position to which Wachsmann was appointed and in 1999 he received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. In 2010 he was promoted to Professor. Most recently, under the aegis of the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project and with the goal of better understanding the maritime dimensions of the port of Jaffa, Israel, he directed The 2014 Ioppa Maritima Project, which combined a geoarchaeological/geophysical land survey together with a deep-water Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) examination of multibeam survey anomalies at depths of 50-250 meters.