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[illegible] met with [illegible] palace drawn by Delaporte, where it was mixed with the Hittite and post-Hittite remains. The age of this pottery has been recognised and classed to the prehelladic period. I had recognised very much in situ in stratigraphically intact layers, and associated with tholoi in limestone of the violin-shaped type and frequent for example at Tepe Hissar and Shah Tepe on the shore of the Caspian. It has been possible for us to re-establish its exact chronological position, which falls at the end of the 3rd millennium or the beginning of the second.
This is a fossil hitherto unknown of the great family of painted pottery in use throughout the ancient Orient in the 3rd millennium. The stylistic kinship allows us to orient the comparisons towards Northern Syria, ex Mesopotamia and Persia rather than towards central Anatolia. Arslan Tepe is situated near a ford of the upper Euphrates and in fact culturally attaches itself more to the civilisations of the Middle East than to the domain of the Hittite empire proper so called, into which it was incorporated only at a relatively late period.
Excavated down to the heart of the hill, our soundings have revealed at about 10m depth a succession of prehistoric layers with entirely lithic tool-kits, and an enclosure of remarkable dimensions in large-scale masonry whose exact age is not however yet established. [handwritten: initials]
We have observed that the hill of Arslan Tepe has been the scene of several devastations characterised by ruins with a plan disrupted or almost completely effaced. Some of cases
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain