Frank Hole Frank Hole (Ph.D., Chicago 1961) taught at Rice University for 17 years and had been at Yale from 1980 to his retirement in 2005. He is head of the Anthropology Division of the Yale Peabody Museum, and C. J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology; he is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Over a span of some forty years Hole has traveled in the Near East, formerly in Iran and currently in Syria, and carried out archaeological, ethnographic and land use research. He specializes in the history of the development of agriculture and animal husbandry; through excavations at Ali Kosh and Chagha Sefid in Deh Luran, Iran, he provided some of the first substantial evidence for the early stages of agriculture. Additionally, his study of modern nomadic herders led to the excavation and interpretation of an 8000 year old herders' camp. In Syria he has carried out a series of reconnaissance surveys and excavations for periods ranging from the Neolithic to the Third Millennium. For the past six years he has been co-PI on NASA grants to study land use in Southwest Asia. These land use studies have focused on changes in agricultural systems over the thirty year record of satellite images. Combining this data with archaeological evidence, he is reconstructing the 9000 year history of land use for the Khabur region of northeastern Syria. Some of his current research can be viewed online at the Yale Center for Earth Observation's South West Asia Project.