Davide Nadali is associate professor in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Department of Ancient World Studies, Sapienza University of Rome. He received in 2006 a PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Sapienza University of Rome on Neo-Assyrian bas-reliefs of the seventh century BC, published as Percezione dello spazio e scansione del tempo. Studio della composizione narrativa del rilievo assiro di VII secolo a.C., Contributi e Materiali di Archeologia Orientale 12, Rome: Sapienza University of Rome, 2006, ISBN 978-88-88233-10-9). From 2008 to 2010, he has been postdoctoral fellow at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Florence with a research project on warfare in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia. In 2010 and 2011, he has been teaching Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Parma. In 2011-2012, he has been tenure-track researcher at the Sapienza University of Rome within a European funded project on the restoration and valorisation of archaeological sites (namely Ebla in Syria).
Since 1998, he is member of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Ebla (Syria). He has been involved in the ERC funded project on Ebla and its landscape as member for archaeological surveys in the sites of Tell Munbatah and Tell Sakka (Syria). Since 2014 he is co-director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Tell Zurghul/Nigin in Southern Iraq.
Since 2007 he is member of the scientific committee of the journal Historiae, published by the University of Barcelona; since 2013, he is co-editor of the series Ancient Warfare (CHANE – Culture and History of the Ancient Near East), published by Brill NV (Leiden, Netherlands); since 2014, he is member of the scientific committee of the series Contributi e Materiali di Archeologia Orientale (Rome, Italy) and member of the editorial board of Studia Eblaitica published by Harrassowitz (Wiesbaden, Germany).
His main interests of research concern: art, architecture and urbanism in the Assyrian period; the study of ancient warfare; the use, meaning and reception of the production of images and pictures in ancient Mesopotamia and Syria with articles as single author and co-authored studies on the impact of pictures in ancient societies; the incipient urbanism in ancient Mesopotamia and the Early Dynastic Period (third millennium BC) of ancient southern Mesopotamia.
In 2012, his three-years project on “Time through Colours: Analysis of Painted Artefacts in Their Archaeological, Historical and Sociological Contexts” has been selected and approved within the national funding “FIRB – Futuro in Ricerca 2012” of the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR): the research, in collaboration with Italian universities of Perugia and Cagliari, focuses on Raman analyses of Mesopotamian archaeological artefacts now in the Ashmolean Musuem of the University of Oxford. Dr Nadali is Principal Investigator of the national project and responsible of the research unit of the Sapienza University of Rome.
In 2017 he got a 3-years funding by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) for the project "Fluid Crescent. Water and Life in the Societies of the Ancient Near East: (PIN 2017), acting as PI.
Since 2014 he co-directs the Italian archaeological excavations at Tell Zurghl, ancient Nigin in the State of Lagash in Southern Iraq.
Since 2919 he has been appointed ad vice-director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Syria (Tell Mardikh-Ebla) and he is member of the Ebla Project for the study and promotion of the ancient culture of Ebla.