Guillermo Algaze (born November 24, 1954) is a Cuban-born American anthropologist and recipient of a 2003 MacArthur Award,[1] Algaze is a former chair of the anthropology department at University of California, San Diego, and project director of the Titris Hoyuk excavation in southern Turkey.
[2][3][4] Algaze was born on November 24, 1954, in Havana, Cuba, and was raised in Puerto Rico.
He joined the University of California, San Diego faculty in 1990, where he has taught as a professor and has served as the chair of the anthropology department.
[9] In the 1990s, Algaze was a major proponent of an anthropological theory on the spread of civilisation from the Euphrates valley area and ancient Mesopotamia, arguing that colonial expansion from south to north (from the area that is currently southern Iraq) was responsible for the establishment of city-states in northern Iraq and Syria and southeastern Turkey.
Following discoveries in the new millennium, Algaze says he has been "eating a lot of crow", acknowledging that evidence suggests societies in the northern area emerged simultaneously and independently of the Mesopotamian expansion.