Hashbai or Tell Hashbai is an archaeological site on the west of the Beqaa Valley

Beqaa Valley

The Beqaa Valley is a fertile valley in east Lebanon. For the Romans, the Beqaa Valley was a major agricultural source, and today it remains Lebanon’s most important farming region...

 in Lebanon

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

.

The area is watered by the Mount Lebanon

Mount Lebanon

Mount Lebanon , as a geographic designation, is a Lebanese mountain range, averaging above 2,200 meters in height and receiving a substantial amount of precipitation, including snow, which averages around four meters deep. It extends across the whole country along about , parallel to the...

 reservoir

Reservoir

A reservoir , artificial lake or dam is used to store water.Reservoirs may be created in river valleys by the construction of a dam or may be built by excavation in the ground or by conventional construction techniques such as brickwork or cast concrete.The term reservoir may also be used to...

s and sits besite the Wadi Hashbai, close to the Ain Hashbai springs. The site is located on the side of the valley as older sites in the central valley have been deeply covered in soil.

It was first surveyed and studied in 1965-6 by Lorraine Copeland

Lorraine Copeland

Lorraine Copeland is an archaeologist specialising in the Palaeolithic period of the Near East. Her husband was Miles Axe Copeland Jr, and they had four children, all of whom have gone on to have notable careers: Miles Copeland III, Ian, Lorraine and Stewart Copeland.Lorraine Copeland was born in...

, Peter Wescombe and Henri de Contenson

Henri de Contenson

right|250px|thumb|Henri de ContensonHenri de Contenson , is a French Archaeologist and was Research Director at CNRS, The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique , a research organization funded by France's Ministry of Research.A student of André Parrot, Raymond Lantier and André...

. Materials found included burnished, red-washed shards of pottery (some with incision decoration), arrowheads, sickle blades with coarse denticulation, obsidian

Obsidian

Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock.It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth...

, basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

 rubber and a limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 pestle. suggested PPNB or Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 dating similar to Tell Ramad

Tell Ramad

Tell Ramad is a prehistoric, Neolithic tell at the foot of Mount Hermon, about southwest of Damascus in Syria. The tell was the site of a small village of , which was first settled in the late eighth millennium....

, Byblos

Byblos

Byblos is the Greek name of the Phoenician city Gebal . It is a Mediterranean city in the Mount Lebanon Governorate of present-day Lebanon under the current Arabic name of Jubayl and was also referred to as Gibelet during the Crusades...

 or Amuq with occupation as late as the Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

. A dark brown and black flint

Flint

Flint is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as a variety of chert. It occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones. Inside the nodule, flint is usually dark grey, black, green, white, or brown in colour, and...

 group of later appearance was also detected. It was suggested that if this flint group were to belong with the production period for Dark Faced Burnished Ware

Dark faced burnished ware

Dark Faced Burnished Ware or DFBW is the earliest form of pottery developed in the western world.It was produced after the earliest examples from the indepenent phenomenon of the Jomon culture in Japan and is predominantly found at archaeological sites in Lebanon, Israel and southwest Syria...

 or red washed pottery, then it may carry an even earlier PPNB date. Along with evidence from White Ware

White Ware

White Ware or "Vaisselle Blanche" is the first precursor to clay pottery developed in the Levant that appeared in the 9th millennium BC, during the pre-pottery neolithic period....

in the area, this has suggested that the Beqaa sites are of a sub-group suggested to date earlier chronologically than finds from Byblos.