[1] In 1960, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied the history, art and archeology of the ancient Middle East and the cuneiform scripts of the Sumerian, Akkadian and Hurrian languages.
[1] In 1972, Dales joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley as a member of the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
His works include Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan: The Pottery (1986), co-authored with his student, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer.
The definitive account of his 1960 survey on the Makran coast of Pakistan, written in the form of an illustrated journal was the last manuscript to be completed by him before his death.
This latter work was published by the Archaeological Research Facility of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992, entitled, Explorations on the Makran coast, Pakistan: A search for paradise.