Jarmo

Jarmo is an archeological site located in northern Iraq on the foothills of the Zagros Mountains. For a long time it was known as the oldest known agricultural community in the world, dating back to 7000 BC. It is also one of the oldest Neolithic village sites to be excavated. It was first found in 1940’s by the Iraqi Directorate of Antiquities, which later recommended the site to Robert Braidwood of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He had been asking about ancient villages in the Middle East for a study he was conducting. Under the Oriental Institute, Braidwood excavated the site at different times from March 1948 until June of 1955. He wanted to find out more about the origin of food production. The Jarmo archeological site was one of the first means of documentation for the way of life of civilization's first farmers and herders.

There were approximately 100 to 150 people who lived in the village. Twenty permanent mud-walled houses, with stone foundations, tauf walls, and reed bedding, housed the residents of Jarmo. The people reaped their grain with stone sickles, stored their food in stone bowls, and possessed domesticated goats, sheep, and dogs. They also grew emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, and lentils. In addition to their agriculture, they also foraged for wild plants such as the field pea, acorns, pistachio nuts, and wild wheat. The later levels of settlement contained evidence of domesticated pigs and clay pottery. Since many of their tools were made of obsidian from beds 300 miles away, a primitive form of commerce must have existed. Bone tools, especially awls, were abundant from the site. Carefully made bone spoons and beads were also found.

Braidwood said, after he was unable to excavate the site any further due to political reasons, that Jarmo as a settlement was an social and economical example for future Mesopotamian cultures that would arise around 4000 BC. It was also the first site in the Near East in which interdisciplinary field archeology was used to discover the origins of food production.

Images courtesy of http://www.maxpages.com/ribbentrop/Jarmo_Iraq

References:

Laure, Gerald A., Old Testament Life and Literature http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/chap6.html 1968

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archeology in the Near East http://www.maxpages.com/ribbentrop/Jarmo_Iraq 1997

by, Chrissy Erickson