Arqa is a 7 ha, 40 m high tell located in the northern coastal region of Lebanon, a few miles south of the present syro-lebanese border. The site was probably settled as early as the 6^th millennium, but the presently excavated sequence goes back to about the mid-third millennium only. Excavated BA levels are: lev. 17 (phase R = late EB III), 16 & 15 (phase P = EB IV), 14 (phase N = MB I), 13 (phase M = MB II), 12 (phase L = LB I); later LB levels (11) are very poorly represented.

The late third millennium settlement was burnt down around 2000 BC. The earliest MB I structure is a "warrior tomb " with full weaponry and a nice set of pottery (C14 dates for this find will probably be available only after the Vienna meeting).

A potters' workshop was then established, the remains of which have been found all over the excavated area : it remained in use during 3 or 4 stratigraphic sub-phases of level 14, but few significant changes in the corresponding pottery of phase N can be distinguished. Manufacturing and firing techniques can be reconstructed with a fair degree of precision.

Patterns of change in the pottery repertoire and decoration vs. continuity in manufacturing techniques between late EB IV (level 15) and MB I (level 14) are discussed. Comparisons with the neighbouring areas show some contacts mainly with northern coastal Syria, few or none with inland Syria and the South. Many features of the pottery are also strictly local, e.g. the complete lack of red slip on bowls and jugs, or standard shapes of jugs and large jars, for which no good parallels are to be found elsewhere.

It seems that the region around Arqa remained fairly isolated and self-sufficient during phase N and opened up to wider-ranging cultural contacts with the MB coastal koine only in the succeeding phase M (level 13 = MB II). Even then, many "archaic" features such as vertical burnishing, flat-bottomed jars or step-rimmed juglets single out the pottery of Arqa as a distincly local, "northern" assemblage.