Sawane ; the lithics indsutries of the Palmyra Basin

In Syria, prehistoric material testifies of a very old occupation. The stratigraphy accumulated of the known sites give evidence of the human presence in the Near East since 1,3 million years. In the course of the millenniums the people regularly settled down there: around water sources. In the pond of Palmyra, prehistoric remains are many and varied. So, in this dry region, for a long time, the presence of the water seems to have made of Palmyra a place of anchoring. The concentration of sites on this restricted geographical area contradicts the idea of rare occupations in these steppiques zones during the prehistory. This very old antiquity is presented here from the excavations of the site of Umm el Tlel, under the shape of a notebook with, to the back, a general stratigraphy of the Syrian prehistory.