Lorenzo Nigro

Lorenzo Nigro is an Italian archaeologist at Sapienza University of Rome and director of multiple long-running Mediterranean and Near Eastern excavation projects.

Since 1997 Nigro has co-directed the joint Italian-Palestinian expedition to Tell es-Sultan (ancient Jericho) with the Palestinian Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. This expedition succeeds the earlier excavations of Ernst Sellin (1907-1909), John Garstang (1930-1936), and Kathleen Kenyon (1952-1958). Nigro's work has focused on stratigraphic re-examination of the Bronze Age city and on the chronological re-dating of the Middle and Late Bronze fortifications, which sit at the heart of the long-running debate over the historicity of Joshua 6 — a debate that remains three-way among the conclusions of Garstang, Kenyon, and Wood. His team has also opened new areas of the tell to better characterize the Early Bronze occupation that Kenyon documented but did not fully publish.

In parallel, Nigro directs Sapienza's excavations at Motya (modern San Pantaleo, Sicily) — a Phoenician colonial site with deep ties to Tyre and the broader Phoenician maritime network referenced in Old Testament texts about Tyre and Sidon. He also leads work at Khirbet al-Batrawy in Jordan, a fortified Early Bronze Age city whose violent destruction layer offers comparative material for understanding urban collapse across the southern Levant.

Nigro's publications appear in Italian and English in venues including Vicino Oriente, the journal his Sapienza team publishes, and his methodological writing emphasizes the integration of stratigraphic, ceramic, and radiocarbon evidence.