Dr Deborah Carlson
Deborah studied classical archaeology at the University of Arizona and participated in the terrestrial excavations of a Roman villa in Tuscany and a Greek temple in the Peloponnese. In 1996, Deborah moved to Texas so that she could study shipwreck archaeology with George Bass, the Father of Underwater Archaeology. When Bass invited her to assist with the excavation of a fifth-century B.C. Classical Greek shipwreck in Turkey, Deborah traded in her trowel for a wetsuit and never looked back.
Deborah earned a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004 and joined the faculty of the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University the same year. From 2005-2011 she directed the excavation of a first century B.C. ship that sank off the Turkish coast while transporting a cargo of marble to the oracular Temple of Apollo at Claros. As President of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) since 2012, Deborah spends part of each year in Turkey conducting research at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. She adores Turkish culture and food and is happiest thinking about languages, words, and amphoras.
