Jarmo

   An important archaeological site in northern Iraq, where modern excavators found the remains of a prehistoric agricultural village dating to the seventh millennium B.C. Located in the foothills of the upper Zagros Mountains, just east of the Assyrian plains, Jarmo (or Qalat Jarmo) appears to have been one of the early villages set up by the inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent as they made their way southward onto the Mesopotamian plains. Excavations undertaken between 1948 and 1955 by Robert and Linda Braidwood of Chicago's Oriental Institute revealed that the village measured about 300 by 450 feet (92 by 135m) and supported a population of from one to two hundred. The diggers found the remains of twenty primitive houses with walls made of packed mud, a technique predating that of dried clay bricks. The villagers raised barley, emmer wheat, peas, sheep, and goats. Small clay tokens of varying geometric shapes found in the ruins may have been used to count livestock and measure quantities of harvested crops.

   See also: farming; Fertile Crescent; Ubaidian culture