This preliminary report is devoted to the excavation season of Autumn, 1978, although it does also include mention of a grave discovered accidentally on the North-East Mound in November, 1979, while we were not supposed to be digging, only studying at the site. The work in 1978, which in fact lasted from the beginning of October until 10th January 1979, was supported by generous grants from the British Academy, the British Museum, and the National Geographic Society, Washington D.C.; we are as grateful as ever to these institutions for their continuing support. Our team was composed of Mrs. Ellen McAdam and Messrs. R. Bewley, A. R. Green and A. Sheen (site supervisors), Mr. and Mrs. R. K. Vincent, Jr., (photographer and graves recorder), Miss Catherine Sease (conservator), Miss Frances Wollen (cataloguer) and Miss Siriol Mynors (pottery recorder). We were joined for a month by Dr. Rosemary Ellison, who initiated a sieving and flotation programme, and after Christmas by Mr. R. G. Killick, who completed the planning of the West Mound. As representatives of the State Antiquities Organization we were lucky to have Sd. Nadhir Al-Rawi and, for the second time, Sd. Ali Hashim: to both of them we were all much indebted for their untiring help and cheerful collaboration. During the season we were especially pleased to have visits from the members of the Isin and Larsa expeditions, as well as from Dr. T. C. Young, Jr., our better half in the Hamrin.

The flints described here are of interest because they make up a complete late flint industry. They come from well-dated deposits in an area apparently without earlier or later occupation, and can thus be regarded as characteristic of the period. The industry is simple, with a very restricted tool range; there are abundant blades, denticulate sickle blades used in composite sickles of wood and bitumen, small numbers of micro-borers for perforating beads and occasional other tools.

The first section below deals with flints from stratified Early Dynastic III levels of the main mound excavated in 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978, the second with flints of the same date found in 1976 in what is thought to be a flint knapper's working pit.

The flint used is a fairly fine-grained nodular flint, generally brownish-grey, with brown bands near the cortex. Many specimens have been burnt. Rare blades are made of a dark grey, rather opaque, obsidian. Both flint and obsidian must be imported, neither being obtainable locally. The flint is similar to that used at the same date at Kish, and both may be imported from the same source.

Parmi les objets recueillis en 1976 sur le carrelage le plus récent de la pièce 13 de l'E.babbar de Larsa, on note une perle à quatre spirales en or (Pl. XIII, L. 76.5). Elle a été ramassée en un endroit où le carrelage avait été démonté: les carreaux de la pièce 13, comme ceux de la pièce 8, étaient en cours de pillage lorsqu'un incendie général mit fin à l'existence de cette partie du sanctuaire. A titre d'hypothèse, ce carrelage, malgré l'absence de briques estampées, est attribué à Adad-apla-iddina. Dans l'état actuel de nos connaissances sur cette partie de l'E.babbar, la perle ne peut être postérieure à la fin du XIe siècle av. J.G. Mais elle peut être beaucoup plus ancienne, sa petite taille lui permettant d'échapper aux regards, comme elle avait échappé à l'œil des ouvriers qui procédèrent, dans l'antiquité, au démontage du carrelage.

Cet objet attire à nouveau l'attention sur une série bien connue depuis les travaux de M. Mallowan, W. Culican et K. Maxwell-Hyslop. Ce type de bijou mérite, à cette occasion, un nouvel examen, d'autant que la centaine d'exemplaires connue à ce jour n'a jamais fait l'objet d'un catalogue. En raison de l'incertitude de la plupart des datations (et l'exemplaire de Larsa n'échappe pas à ce sort commun), il semble approprié de fonder la typologie de ces perles — dans la mesure de la précision des publications sur ce point — sur la technique de la fabrication, assez variée. Cette variété n'a rien pour surprendre, s'agissant d'un type de perle dont l'aire de répartition s'étend depuis le domaine égéen jusqu'à la vallée de l'Indus.

The tell at Arpachiyah in Northern Iraq has proved to be a key site in providing detailed information concerning the Halaf culture. At the suggestion of Dr. Joan Oates and Professor David Oates an eight week season of excavations was begun on the site on 5th September, 1976. Mr. Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi Minister of Information, arranged a grant to help finance this season. The staff consisted of two conservators (Mr. Jalal Ibrahim and Mr. Kalil Qabtan), a photographer (Mr. Mudhir al Khalide) two experienced Shergati excavators with three assistants, and the author as director. I would like to express my gratitude to the staff of the Mosul Museum, Mr. Manhal Jebur, Mr. M. Said al-Iraqi, and Mr. Hazim Abdulhamid. In addition special thanks go to Dr. Isa Salman, the Director General of Antiquities at the time, and to Dr. B. Abu es-Soof. During our two months on the tell we were visited by the late Professor Fuad Safar, Dr. Oates, Mr. M. A. Mustafa and Mr. T. Matsutani, all of whom provided us with sound advice which certainly assisted in the solution of some of the more difficult problems we encountered.

The basic intention of these excavations was to expand on Sir Max Mallowan's 1933 season at Arpachiyah, to check and, if possible, to improve on the archaeological sequence that he established and which was published in this journal in 1935. The information produced in this report is taken in part from the writer's Ph.D. dissertation, The Halaf Culture in Mesopotamia, Institute of Archaeology, London University, to be submitted in 1980.

Tell Arpachiyah and Tepe Gawra, two sites located in the Mosul region of Iraq, together provide the basis for much of Northern Mesopotamian prehistory. Excavations by Sir Max Mallowan at Tell Arpachiyah in 1933 and by the University of Pennsylvania at Tepe Gawra between 1932 and 1938 produced the key ceramic sequences for the Halaf and northern ‘Ubaid cultures in particular. Halaf and ‘Ubaid pottery subsequently excavated at other sites in northern Iraq and in Syria and Turkey as well has, as a general rule, been interpreted in terms of Arpachiyah and Gawra ceramic sequences. It therefore seems worthwhile to re-examine the early pottery of these two important sites using the recently developed technique of neutron activation analysis. A carefully designed programme of neutron activation analyses would provide a new perspective on the Tell Arpachiyah and Tepe Gawra pottery and could perhaps answer some important questions about the Halaf and ‘Ubaid cultures in the Mosul region and beyond.

Firstly, activation analysis offers a method for correlating more directly the Arpachiyah and Gawra prehistoric sequences on the basis of pottery imports. The analysis of Halaf potsherds from sites in the Khabur headwaters region has already demonstrated that painted pottery was being traded there on a considerable scale by the latter part of the Halaf period. It seems likely that pottery could also have been traded between Tell Arpachiyah and Tepe Gawra from quite early on since the two mounds are separated by a distance of only twenty-five kilometres. If the pottery exported from one of these sites could be identified by neutron activation analysis at the other site, then the degree of temporal overlap between the prehistoric occupations of the mounds could be better assessed.