Chapter 5: Neolithic 3 Kubbah (Pages 339-340)

Pre-History and Archaeology Glossary

Excerpts and Definitions and Addendums:

Kubbah I is a low mound which lies near the mouth of the Nahr el Joz 2 kilometres north-north-east of Batrun on the Lebanese coast (See Page 101 in *1 Below). The mound is on the north side of the river and has been cut through by the railway which runs from Tripoli to Beirut. The site has never been excavated but material has been collected from the surface by a number of archaeologists and much of it deposited in the Universite Saint-Joseph in Beirut where I have seen it.

From the surface finds we know that the site was occupied as late as the early Bronze Age. The material from the site which is typologically earliest consisted of flint tools and a potsherd. The arrowheads were all tanged and of both Amuq and Byblos type. All the sickle blades were segmented with fine or coarse denticulation along the cutting edge. The third group of diagnostic tools was the flaked flint axes. There were both trapezoidal and almond-shaped examples of these with flaked or polished cutting edges. The potsherds came from the rim of a hand-made hole-mouth jar. The fabric was brown in colour with a little mineral and straw filler and the sherd had been medium fired. There was a ledge handle attached to it and the outside surface of the whole piece had been burnished. The affinities of these flints and the sherd are all with the Neolithique Ancien of Byblos, as Cauvin has noted. This means that there was a settlement at Kubbah I in Neolithic 3.

There is one other site in north Lebanon, Tell Kirri, 3 kilometres south of the border with Syria on the Akkar plain which was also occupied in Neolithic 3 (see Page 70 ibid). Some black and buff burnished sherds decorated with shell combing and incisions which resembled Neolithique Ancien pottery from Byblos were found in a cut made in the side of the tell. A few flint tools were also collected but little else of this phase that was diagnostic. The site continued to be occupied in the Bronze Age and later.

Two other stations in and near Beirut, Beirut VI and Dikwene II, may have been occupied in Neolithic 3 (See Page 74 and 84 ibid) but insufficient is known about either for us to be certain of this .....