Christian Darles (1949-2021), architect and archaeologist, was honorary professor at the Ecole nationale d'Architecture de Toulouse and associate researcher at several institutions intruding the CNRS. Since 1976 he has participated in French and International field programs in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Tunisia, Morocco, and was expert to UNESCO. He was a corresponding member of the French Académie d'Architecture and a Knight of the ordre national des Arts et des Lettres.
Lamya Khalidi is a researcher at the CNRS in the Cultures et Environnements : Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen Age (CEPAM) laboratory in Nice, and is an archeologist and specialist in the late prehistory of Arabia and the Horn of Africa (12th - 1st millennium BC). She works on the circulation and production of obsidian, and human-environment interrelations to reconstruct prehistoric human interactions and mobility.
She is a permanent member of international archaeological programs in Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, Republic of Djibouti, Syria, and Lebanon. Director of several missions in Yemen between 2002 and 2010, she currently directs the VAPOR-Afar project in Ethiopia. She is co-editor of three books and has authored and co-authored more than sixty scientific and mainstream articles. Mounir Arbach is director of research at the CNRS in the Archéorient laboratory - Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, Lyon, and is an epigrapher and specialist in the languages and history of pre-Islamic South Arabia (85 century BC - 6th century AD).
He is a member of the French Archaeological Mission in Yemen (1993-2010) and in Saudi Arabia (2006-2017) and it currently director of the French-Saudi Archeological Mission in the al-Faw region (2017-2021). He is author and co-author of a dozen scientific books and a hundred scientific and mainstream articles.
