• Long-term surface dynamics of Africa
• Geomorphology, regolith, georesources
• Structural Geology, tectonics, Source-to-Sink

I am a prehistorian who performs archaeological research along the eastern African Rift system in order to reconstruct the dynamics of human settlement in relation to the emergence of new technical practices, new behavioural skills and related paleoenvironments, from the early hominins bearing the Oldowan culture to the early ‘Homo sapiens’ groups, authors of the Middle Stone Age, i.e. from ca. 2.3 million years to 30 thousand years before present.

Lamya Khalidi is a researcher in archaeology with the French CNRS at the CEPAM laboratory in Nice. A Cambridge University graduate, she has 25 years of experience in Middle East and African archaeology and currently leads the VAPOR-Afar fieldwork project in Ethiopia. Her research examines human-landscape interactions in the context of the development of the first production societies, principally during periods of Neolithization and of the establishment of the first proto-urban societies in the Middle East and in the Horn of Africa. Her research focuses particularly on fingerprinting obsidian circulation to study the dynamics of mobility, contact and exchange in the African Horn and the Arabian Peninsula and the links that existed between these regions, the Middle East and North Africa.

Fieldwork Projects:

• VAPOR-Afar, Ethiopie (dir. L. Khalidi)
• AGXIM TelluS-Rift, Ethiopia (dir. C. Doubre)
• LSA Sequence in Ethiopia, Ethiopia (dir. C. Ménard)
• PSPCA, Republic of Djibouti (dir. J. Cauliez)
• Kadrouka, Sudan (dir. O. Langlois, Ph. Chambon, P. Sellier)

Research Projects:

• 2021 – in progress: Partenaire dans l’ANR ‘Nilafar’ (PI M. Revel)
• 2021: UCAJedi Idex ‘CORETEX’ (PI L. Khalidi, M. Gabriele)

My area of interest is mainly concerned with ‘Use of fuel for metallurgical and domestic activities in medieval and contemporary periods: the case of Konso region, South Ethiopia’. Konso is the perfect region to study the use of fuel in a diachronic and interdisciplinary approach. Traditional iron smelting is a vanishing tradition in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa. It is, thus, very important to document such a vanishing tradition before its complete disappearance. The study will also help us understand the culture-history of iron technology in the region and reconstruct the pre-medieval and medieval palaeoenvironment of the region through anthracological, archaeobotanical, and ethnoarchaeological approaches.