Michael Roaf is a British archeologist, who specialized in ancient Iranian studies and Assyriology. He studied archaeology of Western Asia at the University College of London, and wrote his doctoral thesis, Sculptures and Sculptors at Persepolis (published, 1983) at Oxford. From 1981 to 1985 he was director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and currently is Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Munich.
Regarding his field work, Roaf dug in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Bahrein. In Iran he dug at Tepe Nush-i Jan under the direction of David Stronach, with whom he wrote Nush-i Jan I. The Major Buildings of the Median Settlement. With the Munich University team, he has recently worked in the archaeological expeditions at Gircano and Ziyaret Tepe, ancient Tushhan, Turkey.