Roger Matthews

Wendy Matthews

Amy Richardson

Kamal Rasheed Raheem

The Eastern Fertile Crescent region of western Iran and eastern Iraq hosted major developments in the transition from hunter-forager to farmer-herder lifestyles through the Early Neolithic period, 10,000-7000 BC. Within the scope of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project, excavations have been conducted since 2012 at two Early Neolithic sites in the Kurdistan region of Iraq: Bestansur and Shimshara. Bestansur represents an early stage in the transition to sedentary, farming life, where the inhabitants pursued a mixed strategy of hunting, foraging, herding and cultivating, maximising the new opportunities afforded by the warmer, wetter climate of the Early Holocene. They also constructed substantial buildings of mudbrick, including a major building with a minimum of 65 human individuals, mainly infants, buried under its floor in association with hundreds of beads. These human remains provide new insights into mortuary practices, demography, diet and disease during the early stages of sedentarisation. The material culture of Bestansur and Shimshara is rich in imported items such as obsidian, carnelian and sea-shells, indicating the extent to which Early Neolithic communities were networked across the Eastern Fertile Crescent and beyond. This volume includes final reports by a large-scale interdisciplinary team on all aspects of the results from excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, through application of state-of-the-art scientific techniques, methods and analyses. The net result is to re-emphasise the enormous significance of the Eastern Fertile Crescent in one of the most important episodes in human history: the Neolithic transition.

Excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, Iraqi Kurdistan

The Early Neolithic of the Eastern Fertile Crescent

My book tells my personal story in fiction form. I was abused by my husband. I loved him, forgave him, and trusted him each time that I went back to him. For outsiders looking in, many can not understand the stock home syndrome that a woman lives through. We as women are dependent on our abusers and are scared to leave. This book explains the honeymoon phases. They are not always bad to us. When it's good it's great. When it gets bad it's horrifying. We loose sight of what normal is. We lose our self respect, dignity, and strength. We lose our support systems such as family or friends outside of the relationship. We are alone, scared, and depressed. I went back one too many times and it ended in tragedy. But, I did survive. It is years later and I can finally face it and talk about it. This story is to help other abused women. I can relate to the cycles and the exhaustion that go along with them. This book is to tell other women I have been there, I understand, and there is hope.

My Story

Analysis of the transition to sedentary farming in the Fertile Crescent and the establishment of Neolithic culture based on major excavations in Iraq.

Amy Richardson

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