Fired: Bone Expert Takes the Fall

Last July, Joe Zias, along with 65 other employees of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), was fired. But Joe is not just anybody. He was the IAA’s—and one of Israel’s—leading physical anthropologists. He studies bones—including human bones.

Trained as an accountant, Zias did not turn to archaeology until he underwent what he calls an early “mid-life crisis,” at age 22. To escape the draft during the Vietnam war, Zias had traveled from the United States to Israel in 1966 on a Jewish peace corps program. Working the fields of a kibbutz on the Mediterranean coast, near Mount Carmel—a region where archaeologists have found remains dating back at least 100,000 years—Zias regularly overturned prehistoric artifacts. The “tremendous mystique” of holding something people had used tens of thousands of years ago led Zias, upon returning home to Detroit, to enroll at Wayne State University as an anthropology and sociology student.