Drama for Diggers

Nothing about the exhibit seems to fit among the musty antiquities of Assyrian Hall in the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. Eye-popping red, blue and yellow paints are splashed inside the glass showcases; a lettered wheel whirls out breezy explanations in art nouveau type. Topping off the extravaganza is a large wall map, lit up by flickering red neon tubing. It is the kind of show that conservative diggers dismiss with a scornful epithet: "Pop Archaeology."

The description delights the man who directed the display. Robert J. Braidwood, 60, is an old hand at upsetting his fellow archaeologists. By using modern aerial photographs to give an astronaut's eye view of the ancient world, and placing ancient artifacts in a contemporary setting, the field director of the University of Chicago's "Prehistoric Project" contrives to add unexpected drama to the simple relics he has found in two decades of digging in the hills of Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Scorning what he calls the gravedigger school of archaeology, Braidwood says: "I've never had much patience with people who go into the field to mine royal tombs and grab off attention-getting treasures." Such forays, he contends, usually turn up little more than archaeological "junk," which provides few new insights into the past.

As his current exhibit demonstrates, Braidwood's own quest has been to document that momentous episode in history when man changed from nomadic hunter to settled farmer. According to an old archaeological axiom, the transition took place thousands of years ago in the Fertile Crescent, the lush Middle Eastern flatlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Largely as a result of Braidwood's spadework, the Fertile Crescent theory has been buried. Most of his colleagues now agree with him that man actually abandoned his vagrant ways as early as 7000 B.C. and set up his first farm villages on the Fertile Crescent's hilly flanks, at elevations of 1,000 ft. to 4,000 ft., before descending to the alluvial river valley.

Fermented Porridge. While roaming those uplands, Braidwood found considerable supporting evidence: long-buried mud-hut villages, fossilized remains of cultivated wheat and barley, bones of such domesticated animals as goats and sheep, and clay figurines of fertility goddesses, some voluptuous, others Twiggy-shaped. Of the 50 artifacts in the display, many of the most interesting come from his initial find at Jarmo. a cluster of some 20 simple dwellings in Iraqi Kurdistan that may well be one of the world's original farming communities. The Jarmoites did not leave a recorded history, but there is no doubt about their sophistication. They put hinged doors on their houses, built chimneys in their walls and, by letting their porridge ferment, possibly brewed the world's first beer. Braidwood's other major digs were at Cayonu in Turkey and Sarab in Iran, both of which are also prehistoric farming villages.

Braidwood is not only a pioneer in the study of the so-called "archaeological gap" between man's shift from hunter to farmer; he is one of the first archaeologists to go forth with whole teams of scholars--geologists, zoologists, botanists--applying a wide range of on-the-spot know-how to each dig. Since his psychedelic show has already become one of the institute's most popular displays, the public obviously digs Braidwood's brand of archaeology.

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