Early Agricultural Settlements in Northern Mesopotamia (Based on Data From the Excavations of the Soviet Expedition)

Abstract

In the spring of 1969, a Soviet archeological expedition began extensive archeological work in Mesopotamia, in the northwestern portion of Iraq. (a) The purpose of the investigation was to examine the problem of the appearance and development of producing forms of economy in Mesopotamia. In recent decades, this problem has attracted particular attention from investigators of the earliest history of humanity. The transition to a producing economy, rightly called the Neolithic revolution (1), was a process of the greatest importance, a genuine turning-point in history which determined the subsequent progress in the economic, social, and cultural development of human society. Mesopotamia played a particularly important role in this process. Its northern foothill portion was one of the most ancient centers on earth of the origin of the principal forms of producing economies: the cultivation of the soil and the raising of livestock. It was in the center of the southwest Asian focus of domestication of wild g...