and weapons, &c., VIII & IX; of alphabets, X & XI.]

The following notes are to be accepted as only a rough and imperfect
guide, since no part of Syria, north of Palestine, has been widely or
minutely explored, and the archaeology of the earliest period, in
Central Syria, for example, is almost unknown.

The periods into which the archaeological history of Syria should be
divided are roughly, as follows:

I. Neolithic and Chalcolithic Age, to about 2000 B.C.
II. Bronze Age or Early Hittite, to about 1100 B.C.
III. Iron Age or Late Hittite, to about 550 B.C.
IV. Persian Period, to about 330 B.C.
V. Hellenistic Period, to about 100 B.C.
VI. Roman Period.
VII. Byzantine Period.


I. Neolithic.

No purely Neolithic sites yet known, but lowest strata of remains at
Sakjegozu and Sinjerli, on the Carchemish citadel, and in certain
kilns at Yunus near by, and also pot-burials among house remains are
of this Age. (But see Chapter VIII, Mesopotamia, whose Neolithic
period is similar.)

Stone implements:
as in Greece, including obsidian of very clear texture, probably of
inner Asiatic, not Aegean production. Bone needles and other