Robert J. Braidwood

The Iranian Prehistoric Project: New problems arise as more is learned of the first attempts at food production and settled village life.

Many indications point toward the hill flanks of the Fertile Crescent in southwestern Asia as the scene of the earliest development of effective food production and a village-farming-community way of life, some 10,000 years ago or less. In its 1959-60 field season, with a staff made up of both cultural and natural historians, the Iranian Prehistoric Project reclaimed further evidence of this important transitional step in human history. This is a short interim report, based entirely on an in-the-field assessment of the materials.

Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in Southeastern Turkey

Since the end of World War II, much evidence has accrued of the primary phase of village-farming community life in Southwestern Asia, which began about 7000 B.C. The remains of (usually) several of the positively domesticated animals (dog, sheep, goat, pig) and plants (wheat, barley, legumes such as peas and lentils) assure us that these settlements were based on effective food production, although collected wild foods also remained a significant portion of the human diet. Evidence of a transitional phase (or phases) that must have immediately preceded the primary phase of effective food production has, however, remained very elusive. Part of a breakthrough appears to have been made in the autumn 1970 field campaign at Caÿonü Tepesi in southeastern Turkey, where the expansion and deepening of earlier exposures has yielded evidence that may span a significant portion of the transition.

Jericho and its Setting in Near Eastern History

The recent general accounts of Miss Kathleen Kenyons brilliant series of campaigns at Tell es-Sultan, the mound in Jordan generally conceded to be that of ancient Jericho, will be well known to readers of Antiquity (cf. especially Wheeler, no. 119, 132–6; Kenyon, no. 120, 184—95). Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Miss Kenyon interpret the prehistoric archaeological assemblages of the two basal phases of Tell es-Sultan as evidence of civization (Miss Kenyons italics), and the surprisingly early radiocarbon dates for the upper portion of the second basal phase of the site are accepted at face value. Miss Kenyon, in fact, believes ( Ill. London News , no. 6,123 [13 October, 19561, 612) that Tell es-Sultan was already a ‘town’ at a date ‘which must approach the 8th millennium’ B.C.

Jarmo: A Village Early Farmers in Iraq

There is a body of theory, most clearly delineated in recent years by V. Gordon Childe, concerning the importance of the appearance of Food-Production as a basic economic revolution. The domestication of plants and animals assured a stable food supply. Proper village life now came into being, and with it a completely new kind of technology. This latter depends on the fact that time now became available for pursuits other than that of simply collecting food. The theory holds it to be no coincidence that such crafts as architecture, pottery, weaving, and presently metallurgy make their appearance with the establishment of Food-production. These crafts make use of materials constructively, and in some cases actually change the physical or chemical properties of the materials. Such a technology was not characteristic of the preceding Food-gathering stage. The Food-producing revolution and the type of technology which attended it were at least the economic prerequisite for the appearance of civilization (in any useful sense of that word).

Prehistoric Investigations in Southeastern Turkey

An archeological survey of the upper Tigris-Euphrates basin in Turkish Mesopotamia revealed a very early phase farming village and a nearby developed phase farming village. Late prehistoric developments in this region are critical to understanding of the beginnings of trade and metallurgy.