Ḥajar is a collective of archaeologists working in different parts of Islamic history and geography and on different topics.

José C. Carvajal López did his undergraduate degree and his PhD in the University of Granada (Spain). He then held a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship in the University of Sheffield (UK), became lecturer of Islamic Archaeology in UCL Qatar (2013-2017) and a lecturer of Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester (UK) (2018-2023). Since 2023 is a Scientific researcher (equivalent to Associate Professor) at the Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit) in the Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) of Spain. His specialist field as an archaeologist is pottery and material culture in general, primarily in Iberia and Qatar, but he also has experience in landscape and architectural archaeology. He focuses on archaeological study of the Islamic culture, mainly in the process of Islamization and in interactions of Islam with other cultures. He searches for approaches that combine anthropological theory on material culture and analyses with scientific techniques.

Sterenn Le Maguer-Gillon is an archaeologist specialised in the incense trade in the Indian Ocean and in the Arabian Peninsula. She also focuses on the role of fragrances in Medieval Islamic society. Affiliated to the CEFREPA (Kuwait) and CNRS ‘Orient & Méditerranée’ (Paris), she has participated in many archaeological missions in Yemen and the Gulf area. She is teaching ‘Arts, history and culture of the Arab-Persian world’ at the Institut Catholique de Paris.

Hagit Nol is a junior professor for Islamic archaeology and art history at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). Her current research deals with mosques in the first three hundred years of Hijra. She is the author of Settlement and Urbanization in Early Islamic Palestine, 7^th-11^th Centuries: Texts and Archaeology Contrasted (Routledge, 2022) and the editor of Riches Beyond the Horizon: Long-Distance Trade in Early Medieval Landscapes (ca. 6^th-12^th Centuries) (Brepols, 2021). Her research interests involve landscape archaeology, early Islam, economic and social history of the early medieval period, and the diffusion of knowledge and ideas.

Irina Shingiray is a historical and anthropological archaeologist, who specializes in medieval Eurasian nomadism, nomadic empires, and their relations with the sedentary world. She received her PhD at Boston University (USA) and held a research appointment in the ERC project “Nomadic Empires” at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford (2015-2019). Currently she continues her interdisciplinary research as an associate member at the Faculty of History, while she is also an affiliate at the Oxford Nizamy Ganjavi Centre for the Study of the History, Languages, and Cultures of Azerbaijan, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Her particular focus is on the early medieval Khazar Empire and on the Islamization of the nomadic people of the Western Eurasian Steppe. Her main archaeological expertise is landscape and burial archaeology.

Valentina Vezzoli is Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage at the University of Udine (Italy). She received her PhD at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her research focuses on the study of material culture and human landscape in the Middle East during the Islamic period, with a special focus on distribution and production of ceramic objects. She also explores cultural and economic interactions between the Islamic world and the Mediterranean. She is currently working on several archaeological projects in Lebanon and Iraqi Kurdistan.