Mark B. Garrison received his B.A. in History from the University of Oklahoma, his M.A. in Classics from the University of Ottawa, and his Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan. In 1984/85 he was the John Williams White Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. In 1988/89 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Since 1989 he has taught at Trinity University, where he is now professor and chair of the Department of Art and Art History. He spent a short but enjoyable, year in 1991/92 as the Carl Blegen Fellow at Vassar College.

Professor Garrison teaches courses on the art and archaeology of cultures in the ancient Mediterranean. His focus is western Asia, but he also teaches courses on Athenian vase-painting, Greek architecture and Roman art and architecture.

Professor Garrison's primary research interest is the glyptic arts of ancient Iran and Iraq in the early first millennium B.C. He specializes in the glyptic preserved on two large archives from Persepolis, the Fortification tablets and the Treasury tablets. With Dr. Margaret Cool Root, he is author of Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Volume I: Images of Heroic Encounter, Oriental Institute Publications 117 (Chicago, 2001). In addition to the documentary work represented in that publication, his research has focused upon social aspects of glyptic production in workshops in Persepolis, especially the issues surrounding the impact of individuals of high status and/or administrative rank on the development of glyptic style and iconography in the early Achaemenid period. He has also explored the relationship of glyptic of the early Achaemenid period with earlier glyptic traditions in Elam and Mesopotamia. Professor Garrison is also a field archaeologist. He has co-directed two projects at Carthage in Tunisia. Since 1995 he has been the field director of the Hac?musalar Project, a large, multi-disciplinary archaeological project in southwestern Turkey.