ABSTRACT
Archaeological periods in the large area of western Asia of which Mesopotamia is the focal point are exhibited in the strata of the Shanidar cave, a large cavern on the edge of the Zagros mountains in northeastern Iraq. After Jarmo, successive periods are commonly designated by the names of the “type sites,” where distinctive assemblages of cultural materials, particularly pottery, are found first or most fully. The first written documents are found in the Uruk and the Jemdet Nasr periods, so the two periods are grouped as the Protoliterate or the Protohistoric period. Like the round structures of the Halaf period at Tell Arpachiya, which were probably the earliest structures in northern Mesopotamia to have been erected for religious purposes, the eighteen temples at Eridu are the earliest shrines in southern Mesopotamia. Thus Mesopotamian tradition justifies the notion that the times before the flood were prehistoric and protohistoric, and the times after the flood historic.
