Both M’lefaat and Dr. Solecki’s Zawi Chemi Shanidar site appear to have been slightly more “settled in” than was Karim Shahir itself. But I do not think they belong to the era of farming-villages proper. The first site of this era, in the hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, is Jarmo, on which we have spent three seasons of work. Following Jarmo comes a variety of sites and assemblages which lie along the hilly flanks of the crescent and just below it. I am going to describe and illustrate some of these for you. Since not very much archeological excavation has yet been done on sites of this range of time, I shall have to mention the names of certain single sites which now alone stand for an assemblage. This does not mean that I think the individual sites I mention were unique. In the times when their various cultures flourished, there must have been many little villages which shared the same general assemblage. We are only now beginning to locate them again. Thus, if I speak of Jarmo, or Jericho, or Sialk as single examples of their particular kinds of assemblages, I don’t mean that they were unique at all. I think I could take you to the sites of at least three more Jarmos, within twenty miles of the original one. They are there, but they simply haven’t yet been excavated. In 1956, a Danish expedition discovered material of Jarmo type at Shimshara, only two dozen miles northeast of Jarmo, and below an assemblage of Hassunan type (which I shall describe presently). THE GAP BETWEEN KARIM SHAHIR AND JARMO As we see the matter now, there is probably still a gap in the available archeological record between the Karim Shahir-M’lefaat-Zawi Chemi group (of the incipient era) and that of Jarmo (of the village-farming era). Although some items of the Jarmo type materials do reflect the beginnings of traditions set in the Karim Shahir group (see p. 120), there is not a clear continuity. Moreover--to the degree that we may trust a few radiocarbon dates--there would appear to be around two thousand years of difference in time. The single available Zawi Chemi “date” is 8900 ± 300 B.C.; the most reasonable group of “dates” from Jarmo average to about 6750 ± 200 B.C. I am uncertain about this two thousand years--I do not think it can have been so long. This suggests that we still have much work to do in Iraq. You can imagine how earnestly we await the return of political stability in the Republic of Iraq. JARMO, IN THE KURDISH HILLS, IRAQ