Archaeology Magazine - September 1954 - 57

regions, dealing primarily with the
Neolithic Period and the Bronze Age.
In the form of a compact reference
volume,they present the foundations of
a coordinated chronological structure,
with comparative tables, line drawings
and bibliographies.
The contributors and the regions
covered are: Helene J. Kantor, Egypt;
W. F. Albright, Palestine; Robert J.
Braidwood, Syria; Ann L. Perkins,
Mesopotamia; Donald E. McCown,
Iran; Hetty Goldman, Southeastern
Anatolia; Saul S. Weinberg, The
Aegean; Robert W. Ehrich, Southeastern and Central Europe; Lauriston
Ward, China.
The list price is $2.50; a specialprice
of $1.25 is offered to Institute members. Orders should be sent to the General Secretaryof the Archaeological
Institute of America, Andover Hall,
Cambridge38, Mass.
Expedition to Iraq
The Iraq-Jarmo project, the prehistoric field aspect of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago's
present program in western Asia, has
again been activated for the season
1954-55,under the general direction of
Robert J. Braidwood of the Oriental
Institute and the Department of Anthropology at Chicago. Dr. Bruce
Howe of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, will have charge of
the affiliatedoperationsof the Baghdad
Schoolof the AmericanSchoolsof Oriental Research;Dr. Howe has been appointed Baghdad professor of the
School for 1954-55. Professor H. E.
Wright, Jr., of the Department of Geology at the University of Minnesota,
will continue his physiographic and
climatologicalstudies with the aid of a
Guggenheim fellowship. The project
has been able to expand its concern
with the reconstructionof the ecological situation which obtained at the time
of the ^appearanceof the village-farming community, through a generous
grant made to the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chicago by the National ScienceFoundation. Professor Frederick R. Matson of
PennsylvaniaState Universityand Professor Charles R. Reed of the University of Illinoiswill, respectively,be concerned with Radiocarbon dating and
with comparative zoologicalproblems.
In the fall of 1954,the project will be
chieflyconcernedwith a survey of the

Pre-Columbian Gold
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
has recently announced the acquisition
of gold figures and objects of personal
adornment from sites in the Canal
Zone, Panama and Costa Rica. All are
Pre-Columbianin date, and all but one
come from burial areas at Howard Air
Field, Venada Beach,in the Canal Zone
near the town of Sona, Veraguas Province, Panama. The cast gold figure of a
man holding a rattle which is illustrated below (height 2% inches) came
from the south central area of Costa
Rica. Another interesting figure is that
of a monkey holding its tail looped
over its head. This figure (height
2 9/1 6 inches), like that of the man,
was cast by the lost wax process.It was
found in a burial near Sona, Panama.
A group of four frogs cast in one mold
with connecting links came from a
Venada Beach burial. The other pieces
include a necklaceof cast gold tubular
beads, three cast pendants, three circular breast plaques and two nose rings,
one of bluish stone tipped with beaten
gold. One pendant has the form of an
alligator with spangleson the back. Another is formed of a double zoomorphic
figure with three spangles and an inverted figure with an elaborate headdress. The third, rather elaborate,
pendant probably represents a jaguar.
This pendant comes from a burial site
at Venada Beach which not only reveals a culture similar to that of the
Coolepeople over one hundred miles to
the north, but also provides a link with
South American metalwork.

drainagebasin of the Greater Zab River,
east of Mosul in Iraq. During the winter months a tour of the more westerly
sites (Mesopotamian Turkey, Syria,
Lebanon and Jordan) which include
the range of materials from the terminal food-gatheringstage to those of the
established village-farming communities will be made, for purposes of
both archaeological and ecologicalreappraisal, and it is anticipated that
key Carbon 14 samples will be collected. In the spring of 1955, the project hopes to complete its commitments
at Jarmo, Palegawra and possibly one
or two other surface sites in the Chemchemal valley in Iraq.
Understanding of the revolutionary

transition from the food-gathering
stage to that of an effectiveagriculturally based village-farming community
calls for a subtle grasp of both the
cultural and ecological factors which
must have been involved. Heretofore
the approach has tended to be a haphazard one, with the archaeologistattempting his own ecologicalas well as
cultural generalizations and theories.
In its plan to coordinatethe field efforts
of both archaeologists and natural
scientists in a primary locus of the
transition, the Iraq-Jarmo project hopes
to contribute evidence for a new and
broader grasp of the subtle interrelationshipsof cultural and environmental
factors at a critical point in history.
185

Archaeology Magazine - September 1954

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - September 1954