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Hermann Genz received his PhD from the University of Tübingen in 1998. Since 2004 he is Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Beirut. He directs excavation projects in Lebanon at Tell Fadous-Kfarabida (2004 – 2016), Baalbek (2012 – ongoing) and Tell Mirhan (2016 – ongoing). His research focuses on the Bronze and Iron Ages of the Eastern Mediterranean, especially the Levant and Anatolia, including the transition from village communities to more complex forms of socio-political organization, often called ‘city-states’ in the late fourth/early third millennia, and the ultimate incorporation of the Levant into large empires in the second millennium BCE and the accompanying socio-economic changes.

Kamal Badreshany is a research associate in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2013. He specializes in the analysis and geological characterization of ancient ceramics using archaeometric techniques, including ceramic petrography, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. Although incorporating data at the micro-level, he is a landscape-oriented anthropological archaeologist interested in human adaptation to changing social, economic, and environmental conditions, especially as related to increasing settlement density and early empires.

Mathilde Jean is a PhD student in Near-Eastern archaeology at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and member of the French Mission at Tell Arqa since 2012. Her PhD thesis investigates the evolution of pottery production and diffusion in the northern Levant during the Early Bronze Age through petrographic analyses. While focusing on Tell Arqa, she also incorporates other regional assemblages such as Enfeh, Qatna and Ras Shamra. She received a three-years research contract from heSam University for her PhD and is a member of the UMR 7041 ArScAn/VEPMO in the CNRS.