Lucas Petit is head of collections and research of the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities. He has held positions at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and at Leiden University. In the last decades he has been involved in various archaeological fieldwork projects in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He is currently co-directing the excavations at Tell Damiyah in Jordan. He has written and edited several volumes, including Oursi hu-beero, Het Nabije Oosten, Settlement Dynamics in the Middle Jordan Valley, A Timeless Vale, Museums and the ancient Middle East and Nineveh.