Stefania Mazzoni

Stefania Mazzoni is an Italian archaeologist, formerly Professor of Archaeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East at the Università di Firenze, where she held the chair after earlier positions at Pisa and at Sapienza Rome. She trained within the Italian Ebla research circle led by Paolo Matthiae and built her own research program on Iron Age north Syria.

From 1986 through 2010 — when fieldwork was halted by the outbreak of the Syrian civil war — Mazzoni directed the Italian Archaeological Mission to Tell Afis, in northwestern Syria. Tell Afis is widely identified with Hazrak / Hatarikka, the city of the Aramaic Zakkur Stele, and accordingly stands at the heart of Iron Age Aramean political and religious history that intersects with Old Testament accounts of the Aramean kingdom of Damascus and its conflicts with Israel and Judah (1 Kings 19-22, 2 Kings 5-13). Her stratigraphic excavation traversed the site from Iron Age fortifications and domestic structures down through Bronze Age and Neolithic strata, producing one of the more carefully published long-sequence north Syrian tells.

Mazzoni's methodological emphasis is on integrating ceramic typology, sealings and small finds, and architectural stratigraphy to reconstruct the political and religious life of Iron Age Aramean centers. Her Tell Afis publications (the multi-volume 'Tell Afis' series and numerous articles in 'Vicino Oriente' and 'Egitto e Vicino Oriente') have become standard references for Iron Age north Syrian material culture. She has also published synthetic studies on Aramean kingdoms, the role of Tell Afis in the Hatarikka-Lu'ash polity, and the ceramic transitions across the Late Bronze / Iron Age horizon.