The Douara Cave is located about 200 km northeast of Damascus, Syria, and about 18 km northeast of Palmyra which is known as a famous oasis town. The cave is on the southern slope of Jabal ad Douara in the mountain masses that bound the Palmyra Basin on the north. These mountains are part of the southern Palmyra Mountains which branch in a northeasterly direction from the southeast of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. The floor of the cave is about 557 m above sea level. The entrance is 10 m wide and 12 m high, and the depth is 14 m. The cave has a corridor-like plan.

The Douara Cave was discovered by the Third Tokyo University Scientific Expedition to Western Asia, 1967, during a general prehistoric survey of Syria and Lebanon. Later, in 1970, members of the Fourth Expedition carried out a systematic excavation of the cave for 2 months from August through September, and confirmed that it was rich in stone artifacts and fossil animal bones derived from the Middle and Epi-Paleolithic ages. In this season, however, time allowed us to excavate only a minor part of the cave. The results of the excavation in this season have been reported under the editorship of Suzuki and Takai (1973, 1974), in which the background of the expedition and the background of the survey of the Douara Cave were described in detail.

In order to make a complete excavation of the cave, the Fifth Tokyo University Scientific Expedition to Western Asia was organized in 1974 with the following members:

	Kazuro Hanihara	Director of the Expedition, Physical Anthropology
	Banri Endo	Physical Anthropology
	Yutaka Sakaguchi	Physical Geography
	Kunihiko Endo	Physical Geography
	Takeei Koizumi	Physical Geography
	Tsuyoshi Fujimoto	Prehistory
	Takeru Akazawa	Prehistory

The main purposes of this field season were to obtain artificial as well as natural remains from the Paleolithic deposits which covered the whole of the cave floor, and to reconstruct the natural environments and paleogeography around the cave.

The excavation and geographical surveys were carried out for 4 months during the period from August through November, 1974, and, very fortunately, a tremendous number of prehistoric remains were obtained. At the same time, paleogeographic data accumulated in this season made possible a reasonable reconstruction of the natural environments in prehistoric ages.

The field work concentrated mostly on the excavation of the cave deposits, as in the preceding season, in order to expose the complete sequence of cave deposits from the surface to the bed rock, and to examine the industrial succession according to the depositional sequence of the cave.

Through partial excavations of the cave in the 1970 season, it was found that the cave had a deposit more than 4 m in depth, divided into several geologically and culturally defined layers with two distinct lithic assemblages: Middle Paleolithic from the lower horizon and Epi-Paleolithic from the upper horizon. These findings have assured the particular importance of this cave in studies of the evolution of the Paleolithic age at a single site. But the 1974 season's data brought to light yet another important fact. The sequence of Middle Paleolithic assemblages in the 1.5 m of the lower horizon manifests significant differences, both typologically and technologically. Those new data are on the way to becoming some of the most important evidence for examining the meaning of the variability seen in the Middle Paleolithic assemblages of the Levant.

In association with the excavation work, geological surveys in the vicinity of the cave were also undertaken. During the surveys, mainly flint-strewn fields, characterized by the presence of artifactual flints, were found in the Palmyra and Douara Basins. Thousands of pieces classifiable as artifacts were collected from these localities. Through examination of these samples, it was found that the flint artifacts fall definitely into two main groups: one Paleolithic and the other Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic. These new findings may provide new data for making a framework to which chronological work on the prehistory of the Syrian desert can be related.

In addition, one result which will be emphasized is that several flint factory sites were recovered in the Douara Basin, which is surrounded by the Douara Mountains and located on the opposite side of the Douara Cave. The sites yielded various types of industries which belong to the Lower Paleolithic, Mounsterian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic ages. The distance between the Douara Cave and Locality 38, one of the factory sites which yielded the same type of flint assemblage, is only about 1 km in a straight line, across a ridge. Moreover, around the slopes of the Douara Mountain and in many caves and shelters in the area, a scattering of Pre-Pottery Neolithic type flints were found. Evidence that two distinct kinds of sites. one the cave sites and the other the factory sites, were located in a restricted area during the same age may provide basic information for the reconstruction of behavioral patterns of prehistoric peoples and a better understanding of their industries.

The present publication, which is the first of two parts, is concerned mainly with the Pleistocene stratigraphy, paleoenvironments and paleogeography in and around the Douara Cave. Archeological descriptions and analyses will appear in Part II, which is scheduled to be published in 1979.

The surveys of the 1974 field season were supported by a number of sources, both individual and institutional. First of all, we should like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. A. Bahnassi, Director of the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums in Damascus, who gave every possible support and assistance to our expedition and kindly permitted us to borrow a complete set of materials collected from the Douara Cave for study in Tokyo.

We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to Professor A. Bounni, Director of Excavation, Dr. R. Naffakh, Head of the Prehistoric Research Section, Mr. K. Toueir, and other staff-members of the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums in Damascus; Mr. K. Assa'd, Director, Mr. A. Taha, Mr. K. Khamber and other members of the Palmyra Museum, who supported our excavations and geographical surveys directly in and around Palmyra; and Mr. M. Imai, the Japanese Ambassador to Syria, and the staff of the Embassy of Japan in Damascus, who kindly helped us officially and privately during our stay in Syria.

We are also indebted to the late Mr. S. Iguchi, the former President, and Mr. K. Iwanaga, Chief of Section of General Affairs, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, who kindly offered us a motor vehicle for the expedition.

The expedition of the 1974 field season and the later investigations in Tokyo were financially supported by the Grant for Overseas Scientific Research for 1974 and 1975 from the Japanese Ministry of Education, to which we are profoundly grateful.