David J. Mattingly earned a Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Manchester in 1984. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford and was on the faculty at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before moving in 1991 to the University of Leicester, where he is now professor of Roman archaeology. He has worked in the Sahara desert since 1979 and has directed a study project in the Libyan Fazzan since 1997. He was a chief author of Farming the Desert, a prize-winning two-volume report published by UNESCO, and he has written numerous other books and articles on the archaeology of North Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.