Gil Stein received a B.A. with honors in archaeology from Yale University in 1978, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988.  He is currently the Director of the Oriental Institute in Chicago.  Dr. Stein’s special areas of interest include the evolution of complex societies, political economy of early states, urbanism, Near Eastern archaeology, ancient colonies, regional economic organization, craft specialization, Neolithic subsistence systems, and zooarchaeology.  Dr. Stein has excavated in Arizona and New Mexico, Syria, and since 1981, in Turkey. From 1992 through 1997, he directed excavations at Hacinebi, a Mesopotamian colony in Turkey, which is part of the world’s first-known colonial system.   He is the author of Rethinking World Systems: Diasporas, Colonies, and the Interaction in Uruk Mesopotamia (1999).