François Briois is a Senior Lecturer at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), attached to UMR TRACES 5608 in Toulouse (Jean Jaurès University). Archaeologist specializing in lithic industries from the recent prehistory of Mediterranean civilizations, his current research focuses on the neolithization processes of the eastern Mediterranean and on the Holocene period of northeast Africa. The work he directs in Cyprus, within the framework of the “neolithization” mission of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE), concerns the first island settlements and their development between the 10th and the 8th millennium BC

He participated in several excavation and publication projects in Egypt on the lithic industries of the Neolithic, Predynastic and Pharaonic periods and he currently directs the mission of Wadi Sannur (eastern desert) within the framework of the programs of the French Institute of Archeology Oriental (IFAO). He is in charge, in collaboration with B. Midant-Reynes, of the study of pre and protodynastic lithic tools of Tell el Iswid.