Braidwood, Robert John, and Braidwood, Linda Schreiber

▪ 2004

      American archaeologists (respectively, b. July 29, 1907, Detroit, Mich.—d. Jan. 15, 2003, Chicago, Ill., and b. Oct. 9, 1909, Grand Rapids, Mich.—d. Jan. 15, 2003, Chicago), investigated the beginnings of settled farming communities, developed interdisciplinary methods of field research, and helped to establish Middle Eastern prehistory as a disciplined field of scholarship. While he was studying at the University of Michigan, Robert Braidwood was invited to do archaeological fieldwork near Baghdad, Iraq, in 1930. He earned an M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1933; Linda Schreiber received a B.A. from the same university in 1932. In 1933 Robert was hired by James Henry Breasted, the founder of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, and began work at an excavation in the Amuq Valley in northern Syria, where he established an approach that made it possible to date artifacts more precisely. In 1937 Robert and Linda Braidwood married, and henceforward they collaborated in their work. World War II brought a temporary halt to their fieldwork, and Robert directed a meteorological mapping program at the University of Chicago for the Army Air Corps. Robert received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1943, and Linda earned an M.A. from the university in 1946. In 1947 the Braidwoods established the Prehistoric Project at the Oriental Institute in order to better study the period when agriculture was first practiced and humans made the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and civilization. They began their fieldwork at Jarmo in northeastern Iraq with an interdisciplinary team that was an innovation in archaeological research. This led to a grant from the National Science Foundation in 1954. The work in Iraq continued until 1958. In 1963 they began work on a joint Prehistoric Project between the University of Chicago and Istanbul University at Coyonu in southern Turkey, where they discovered a farming community believed to date to about 7000 BC. Robert Braidwood was granted the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement by the Archaeological Institute of America in 1971. The Braidwoods retired from fieldwork in 1989 but continued to work and teach at the Oriental Institute. He was a contributor to Britannica Book of the Year for 55 years (1943–97), a record unequaled by any other author. Robert and Linda died of pneumonia a few hours apart.

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