DELLE DONNE MATTEO

Matteo Delle Donne is an Associate Professor of Prehistory and Protohistory (SSD ARCH-01/A) at the University of Naples L’Orientale, where he is affiliated with the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies (DAAM).
Research interests: environmental archaeology, archaeobotany, human–environment interactions, plant resource use and management, Northeast Africa, Southwest and South Asia, the Mediterranean.

His research focuses on environmental archaeology and archaeobotany, investigating long-term relationships between human communities and plant ecosystems during prehistory and protohistory. It examines the role of plant resources in economic strategies and processes of adaptation to environmental change across Northeast Africa (Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia), Southwest and South Asia (Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Pakistan), and the central Mediterranean (Italy), based on archaeobotanical evidence including seeds, fruits, wood, and charcoal.
His work contributes to reconstructing agricultural practices, plant processing and storage techniques, plant-based food production and consumption, the exploitation of arboreal and shrub resources, and past palaeoenvironments.

He teaches Prehistory and protohistory and Bioarchaeology in the BA programme Ancient Cultures and Archaeology: Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean, and Prehistoric Ecology in the MA programme Archaeology: Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean. Since 2022, he has also taught Palaeoecology and Archaeobotany in the Interuniversity Postgraduate Specialization in Archaeological Heritage, at the University of Salerno and the University of Naples L’Orientale.

Since June 2025 he has served as President of the University Museum System of the University of Naples L’Orientale. Since 2016 he has also led a research project dedicated to the study and enhancement of the botanical and ethnographic materials of the Società Africana d’Italia as a source of knowledge for plant biodiversity in pre-protohistoric times.

He is a member of the doctoral board of the PhD programme in Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies at the University of Naples L’Orientale and of the national PhD programme Archaeological, Historical, Architectural and Landscape Heritage of the Mediterranean Area: Integrated Systems of Knowledge, Design, Protection and Enhancement at the University of Bari Aldo Moro (XLI cycle).

He directs the Italian-Iranian Bio-Archaeological Project in Sistan and Baluchistan, Iran, promoted by ISMEO – The International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies. Since 2019 the mission has received co-funding from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation within the programme supporting Italian archaeological, anthropological and ethnological missions abroad.

He graduated in Archaeology in 2005 from the University of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa, with a specialisation in Prehistory and Environmental Archaeology. In the same year he attended the Postgraduate Master’s programme in Geoarchaeological Techniques for Landscape Management and Cultural Heritage Protection at Roma Tre University. In 2009 he obtained the Postgraduate Diploma in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology from Sapienza University of Rome. In 2014 he completed his PhD in the Ancient Near East at the University of Naples L’Orientale. At the same university he served as a research fellow from 2016 to 2019 and as a fixed-term researcher from 2019 to 2025.
In 2009 he was awarded a fellowship from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles, and in 2019 he was a visiting scholar at the Department of Archaeology, the University of Zabol, Iran.

Between 2002 and 2017 he collaborated with the Bioarchaeology and Electronic Microscopy Service of the National Museum of Oriental Art “Giuseppe Tucci” in Rome, and between 2003 and 2011 with the Laboratory of Bioarchaeology of the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (IsIAO). Within this framework, he conducted studies on organic and inorganic archaeological materials as part of research projects carried out in Italy in collaboration with the local Soprintendenze, in Asia within IsIAO archaeological missions, and in other European countries in collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin.

Since 2017 he has been a member of the editorial board and managing editor of Quaderni delle Collezioni Museali de L’Orientale. Since 2023 he has been a member of the editorial board of AION. Annali di Archeologia e Storia Antica. Nuova Serie.

Since 2019 he has been a member of the Centro Studi Cibo e Alimentazione and since 2022 a member of the scientific committee of the Centro Studi sull’Apprendimento e le Didattiche Disciplinari (CSADD), both research centres of the University of Naples L’Orientale. Since 2019 he has also been a member of the following centres of the Excellence Department (DAAM): the Centro Studi sull’Africa (CESA) and the Centro Studi su Interazioni e Scambi nel Mondo Antico e Medievale (CEISMA), for which he edited the quarterly Newsletter between 2022 and 2025. He served as the representative of the researchers on the Department Board of the DAAM for the terms 2020–2023 and 2024–2027.

He has been an ordinary member of the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Protohistory since 2010, of ISMEO – The International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies since 2013, and since 2022 of CeRDO – Research Centre on the Eastern Desert and of the International Society of Nubian Studies.

His research has been published in national and international journals and book series.