Davide Domenici is Associate Professor of Anthropology (M-DEA/01) at the Department of History and Cultures of the University of Bologna, where he works mainly on the anthropology, history, and archaeology of the Indigenous American world between the pre-colonial and early modern periods.
He is currently a member of the Teaching Committee of the PhD program in “Cultural Heritage in the Digital Ecosystem.”
He teaches the courses in “Arte e Cultura dell'America Indigena" (L) "Antropologia museale" (LM), “Colonialism, Archaeology, and Museums” (LM) and “Indigenous Americas, Colonialism, and Globalization” (LM). He also teaches “Anthropology of Food” in the Master's Program in Food History and Culture, University of Bologna.
He has participated in archaeological projects in Nazca (Peru, 1986-1990), Easter Island (Chile, 1991-1992), and Teotihuacan (Mexico 1993-1994). Between 1999 and 2011 he directed the Río La Venta Archaeological Project (Chiapas, Mexico), in collaboration with Thomas A. Lee Whiting, of the Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas (Mexico). Between 2011 and 2017 he directed The Cahokia Project: Toward an Integration of Different Scientific Traditions at the archaeological site of Cahokia (Ilinois, USA), in collaboration with John Kelly, of the Department of Anthropology at Washington University, St. Louis (Missouri, USA).
In 2024 he curated (together with Diana Magaloni and Alyce de Carteret) the exhibition We Live in Painting. The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
He is currently leader of the University of Bologna unit of the PRIN project KNOT. Knowledge of Things. Reassessing Indigenous American Heritage in Italy.
He has published extensively in international journals and edited volumes. His latest book is Il senso delle cose. Materialità ed estetica nell’arte mesoamericana (Bononia University Press, 2017).
His current research topics include:
- Study of Mesoamerican pictorial manuscripts and mosaics using non-invasive scientific techniques (in collaboration with the MOLAB mobile laboratory of the Center of Excellence Scientific Methodologies applied to Archaeology and Art, University of Perugia-CNR).
- History of Italian collecting of indigenous American artifacts, with particular interest in the cultural biographies of Mesoamerican objects collected in early modern Italy.
- Mesoamerican food culture.
