An Accidental Archaeologist: A Personal Memoir
This personal and professional memoir recounts the author's formative years and the family influences that propelled him forward. The experience of anti-Semitism in grammar school and college played a major role. The centrality of music and family were especially influential. His partnership with Carol Meyers allowed him to have a successful career in academic archaeology and in teaching at Duke University. Other endeavors, however, kept him grounded and focused on everyday matters: singing, golf, social activism, teaching, and writing. But it was teaching most of all that imbued his life with special meaning as both student and teacher confronted the riches of the past in a search for a better future.
Biography
Eric M. Meyers is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Emeritus Professor of Religious and Jewish Studies at Duke University. He founded the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke in 1972. His specialties include biblical studies and archaeology. He has directed or co-directed digs in Israel and Italy for over forty years and has authored or co-authored hundreds of articles, reviews, reports and 20 books. Together with his wife, Carol Meyers, he co-authored commentaries on Haggai and Zechariah in the Anchor Bible Series. He served as editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (1997). His most recent excavations at Sepphoris were fully published in 2018 by Penn State University Press under the Eisenbrauns imprint. He also served for three terms as President of ASOR (The American Schools/Society of Overseas Research).