Lorenzo Nigro

Lorenzo Nigro (born 1967) is an Italian archaeologist, novelist and watercolorist. He is Full Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome. He directs three main archaeological expeditions: at Jericho in Palestine, with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, at the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC) fortified city, previously unknown, of Khirbet al-Batrawy in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and at Motya, a Phoenician city in Western Sicily, while also acting as co-director of the Institut national du patrimoine-Sapienza University of Rome Expedition to Carthage in Tunisia. Since 2015 he started the archaeological exploration and protection activities, again in cooperation with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, in the Bronze and Iron Age necropolises of the Bethlehem urban area (including Khalet al-Jam'a, Jebel Dhaher, and Bardhaa) and at the site of Tell esh-Sheikh Abu Zarad, ancient Tappuah. In all these excavations he has been the protagonist of several important discoveries, from the reconstruction of the Bronze Age city at Jericho, to the Temple of the Kothon at Motya, to the entire unknown city of Batrawy with its magnificent fortifications and the Palace of the Copper Axes (the axes are now on exhibit in the Jordan Archaeological Museum in the Amman Citadel), and the Broad Room temple. At Motya it has uncovered at least four temples and detailed a prehistoric stratigraphy at the foot of the acropolis showing that the island in Sicily was occupied and known to Mediterranean sailormen since the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.

Lorenzo Nigro has written 26 monographs and more than 230 articles on the archaeology of the ancient Near East, Phoenicia and Mediterranean Mesopotamian and Egyptian archaeology and history of art, ranging from palatial and temple architecture, pottery chronology, Levantine and Iranian metallurgy, Sumerian and Akkadian art, Phoenician ceramics, settlement studies, history of excavations, etc. Provided by Wikipedia