A Rising Star in the Trenches

摘要

Thirty-two-year-old Salam al-Quntar discovered her first potsherds as a young child playing in the ancient olive groves surrounding her grandfather's house, which was made in part with recycled Roman stones. Today, al-Quntar is co-director of the key Hamoukar dig, where excavators are uncovering dramatic evidence of early urbanism in northern Mesopotamia (see main text). She is also a startlingly outspoken female scientist in this predominantly Muslim country. Busy working on her Ph.D. to synthesize controversial finds at both Hamoukar and nearby Tell Brak, she splits her time among those two sites, Cambridge, Damascus, and her hometown of Suweida in southern Syria. "Her heart is really beating with archaeology, and she is uncompromising and very passionate," says Clemens Reichel, a University of Chicago archaeologist and the other co-director at Hamoukar.