Jérémie Schiettecatte is a research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris. He received his PhD in Archaeology of the Middle East from the Sorbonne University (Paris) in 2006. He authored over seventy published articles and book chapters, and seven books including D’Aden à Zafar. Villes de l’Arabie du Sud préislamique (2011), In the desert margins: the settlement process in ancient South and East Arabia (with M. Mouton, 2014), A stopover in the steppe. The rock carvings of ʿĀn Jamal near Ḥimà (with C.J. Robin et al., 2023).
His current interests lay in the archaeology and history of the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa from the Bronze Age to the Early Islam. Since 2000, he has been working in Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia. He directed the Saudi-French Archaeological Mission in al-Kharj (Saudi Arabia) from 2011 to 2016, and the French Archaeological Mission in Eastern Tigray (Ethiopia) from 2020 to 2022. He directed several research programs, among which “EmOAD – Emergence of the Oases of Arabia Deserta” (Sorbonne University) (2014-16) and “Maparabia — Mapping Ancient Arabia for enhancing knowledge and shifting paradigms” (French National Research Agency, 2018-23). The latter project has resulted in the creation of a digital atlas, gazetteer and dictionary of ancient Arabia.
In his time at ISAW, Schiettecatte aims at producing a connected history of South Arabia between the 10th century BCE and the 6th century CE, by assessing the nature of the economic, cultural and political relationships between South Arabia and the surrounding powers, near and far, and to appreciate, in turn, the impact of the latter on the trajectories of the South Arabian kingdoms. The ultimate aim is to produce a monograph of a connected history of South Arabia, highlighting the growing integration of South Arabia, from a distant trading partner at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, to a major political player in the balance of great powers in late antiquity.