2022 Volume 57 Pages 79-92
It has been 40 years since the excavations of Qminas in northwest Syria were carried out in 1981 by a Japanese-Syrian team, who uncovered a Neolithic settlement with an occupational sequence from the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B to the Pottery Neolithic periods. However, during a long time after the excavations, the results of the investigation have only been briefly reported, and the artifacts recovered during the excavations have never been studied in detail. This paper provides basic information on the 1981 excavations and the material artifacts recovered from this site. It is mainly based on the re-investigation of the archive of the original excavations and the artifact studies conducted during the excavation, as well as some additional studies of the artifacts currently stored at the University of Tsukuba. It can be argued that archaeological evidence acquired from Qminas demonstrates a tradition of local material culture that was shared in northwest Syria through the transition from the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B to the Pottery Neolithic.
