ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the preliminary results of a survey that took place in June 2010 within the Ebla Chora Project (ECP), aimed at reconstructing the environmental conditions around Ebla and its surrounding territory. It presents new data on the mean precipitation at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, which will allow a discussion of the overall trend of climatic change at the end of the 4.2 to 3.9 km climatic crisis. It then presents a geomorphologic study of Ebla and surroundings in order to find evidence of the past precipitation regime, to try to quantify it, and to properly frame it within a geoarchaeological context. The Middle Holocene human settlements in the Near East were strictly influenced by the availability of water, and specifically of precipitation patterns allowing cereals farming. The depression of Matkh is located east of Ebla and is endorheic basin draining water from the surrounding plains, from the north, where the Quweiq river catchment develops.
