The site of Jarmo has a depth of deposit of about twenty-seven feet,
and approximately a dozen layers of architectural renovation and
change. Nevertheless it is a “one period” site: its assemblage remains
essentially the same throughout, although one or two new items are
added in later levels. It covers about four acres of the top of a
bluff, below which runs a small stream. Jarmo lies in the hill country
east of the modern oil town of Kirkuk. The Iraq Directorate General of
Antiquities suggested that we look at it in 1948, and we have had three
seasons of digging on it since.
The people of Jarmo grew the barley plant and two different kinds of
wheat. They made flint sickles with which to reap their grain, mortars
or querns on which to crack it, ovens in which it might be parched, and
stone bowls out of which they might eat their porridge. We are sure
that they had the domesticated goat, but Professor Reed (the staff
zoologist) is not convinced that the bones of the other potentially
domesticable animals of Jarmo--sheep, cattle, pig, horse, dog--show
sure signs of domestication. We had first thought that all of these
animals were domesticated ones, but Reed feels he must find out much
more before he can be sure. As well as their grain and the meat from
their animals, the people of Jarmo consumed great quantities of land
snails. Botanically, the Jarmo wheat stands about half way between
fully bred wheat and the wild forms.
ARCHITECTURE: HALL-MARK OF THE VILLAGE
The sure sign of the village proper is in its traces of architectural
permanence. The houses of Jarmo were only the size of a small cottage
by our standards, but each was provided with several rectangular rooms.
The walls of the houses were made of puddled mud, often set on crude
foundations of stone. (The puddled mud wall, which the Arabs call
_touf_, is built by laying a three to six inch course of soft mud,
letting this sun-dry for a day or two, then adding the next course,
etc.) The village probably looked much like the simple Kurdish farming
village of today, with its mud-walled houses and low mud-on-brush
roofs. I doubt that the Jarmo village had more than twenty houses at
any one moment of its existence. Today, an average of about seven
people live in a comparable Kurdish house; probably the population of
Jarmo was about 150 people.
[Illustration: SKETCH OF JARMO ASSEMBLAGE
CHIPPED STONE
UNBAKED CLAY
GROUND STONE
POTTERY _UPPER THIRD OF SITE ONLY._
REED MATTING
BONE
ARCHITECTURE]
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