Peter van Dommelen is a Mediterranean archaeologist working in the western Mediterranean, where he carries out long-term fieldwork on the island of Sardinia. He concentrates on later Mediterranean prehistory and Classical Antiquity throughout the first millennium BCE. Rural landscapes, Indigeneity, colonialism and connectivity are key themes of his research.

The archaeology and anthropology of the rural Mediterranean and the Phoenician-Punic world of the western Mediterranean broadly define my research. My primary study areas and periods are the islands of Sardinia, Sicily and the Balearics and the Iberian east coast from the Late Bronze Age into the Roman Republican period - the first millennium BC writ large.

Thematically, I am interested in theoretical and anthropological perspectives in archaeology that I draw on to study colonialism and connectivity, with particular reference to postcolonial theory and Indigeneity as opposed to conventional notions like 'Hellenization' and 'Romanization'. A major research theme is constituted by the Indigenous and rural societies in the Mediterranean past and present and their formation and articulation in the wider contexts of colonialism, state formation and globalization. In archaeological terms, my principal fields of experience are settlement and connectivity studies and ceramic analysis.

Fieldwork
A consistently central concern of my work is the combination of a theoretical orientation with practical fieldwork. The background and material to realize these ambitions have long been provided by fieldwork in west central Sardinia. I first co-directed the Riu Mannu Survey Project with M.Beatrice Annis and Pieter van de Velde of Leiden University (1992-1999) that resulted in a diachronic overview of rural settlement in this part of Sardinia. With the Terralba Rural Settlement Project I then zoomed in on colonial rural settlement in the southern reaches of west central Sardinia (2003-11). I co-directed this project in close collaboration with Carlos Gómez Bellard of the University of Valencia (Spain), using intensive site surveys, geophysical prospection and excavation of farm sites along with geomorphological and soil surveys.

As part of the 'Tracing Networks' research program (2009-2014), I led the Colonial Traditions project with Andrea Roppa to investigate ceramic production in Iron Age west central Sardinia with the aim to explore interaction between the indigenous (Nuragic) inhabitants of Sardinia and Phoenician merchants and settlers between the 9th and 4th centuries BCE.

In 2013, I started, with Alfonso Stiglitz, a new project to carry out extensive excavations around nuraghe S'Urachi (San Vero Milis) in western central Sardinia. This project is a joint undertaking of Brown's Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and the Museo Civico of San Vero Milis. The overarching objective of the project is to trace the long-term history of the monumental nuraghe from prehistory into the Hellenistic period and to situate its local inhabitants in the the contexts of indigenous Sardinia and Phoenician colonialism - see sites.brown.edu/surachi.

Key publications
I have long been involved in journal editing: at present, I serve (since 2006), with Catherine Kearns and Sarah Murray, as co-editor of the international peer-reviewed Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, which offers a forum for archaeology and material culture studies from all periods and across all regions of the Mediterranean. I have been a member of the editorial board of World Archaeology between 2009 and 2017, and I am a former founding co-editor of Archaeological Dialogues (1994-2005).

My books include the volume Rural Landscapes of the Punic World (2008, with Carlos Gómez Bellard) that offers an overview of rural settlement and agrarian organisation across the whole of the Punic world; this topic was explored on a global scale in Rural Archaeologies (2019, World Archaeology 51.2). The themes of culture contact and connectivity are explored in detail and in cross-cultural perspective in the edited volumes Articulating Local Identities (2007, with Nicola Terrenato), Material Connections in the Ancient Mediterranean (2010, with A. Bernard Knapp), Postcolonial Archaeologies (2011, World Archaeology 43.1), and Mobility & Migration (2014, World Archaeology 46.4). I have also co-edited Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean (2014, CUP, with Bernard Knapp), while both Materiali e contesti nell’età del Ferro sarda (2014, Rivista di Studi Fenici 41, with Andrea Roppa), and Il Mediterraneo occidentale dalla fase fenicia all'egemonia cartaginese. Dinamiche insediative, forme rituali e cultura materiale nel V secolo a.C. (2021, Quasar, with A. Roppa and M. Botto) are edited volumes that focus on first millennium BC Sardinia. 

[more publications are listed in the short CV]

Professor of Italian (by courtesy)

Faculty Fellow of the Institute at Brown for the Environment and Society