Asa Eger is Associate Professor of the Islamic World at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the History Department. He completed his Ph.D in 2008 at the University of Chicago in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Dr. Eger researches and teaches the Early and Medieval Mediterranean and Islamic Near East focusing on the intersection of archaeology and history and how these two lines of evidence relate and create dialogue that strengthens both fields. Specifically, he studies frontiers, landscape archaeology, and environmental history. His area of specialization is Anatolia and Syria-Palestine (the Levant) from the Byzantine period through the Early and Middle Islamic periods (until the 12th century). He has excavated and surveyed in Israel, Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey since 1996 and recently completed directing excavations at a site on the coast of Turkey in the northeast corner of the Mediterranean known as Tüpras Field, the 10th century frontier fortress of Hisn al-Tinat.