First published in 1994,[2] ASPRO stands for the "Atlas des sites du Proche-Orient" (Atlas of Near East archaeological sites), a French publication pioneered by Francis Hours and developed by other scholars such as Olivier Aurenche.
The periods, cultures, features and date ranges of the original ASPRO chronology are shown below:
In 2001, the institute revised the chronology of the first six periods based on newer carbon data and calibration curves.[3] In Period 3 an early and late phase could be distinguished, but Periods 4 and 5 were merged. Overall they found more overlap in time between different cultural phases between different sites.