Digging beyond the Tigris
Linda Braidwood
Abelard-Schuman
Linda Braidwood tells the story of an archaeological expedition from its original planning stage in the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute to the actual field work in the Kurdish hills of Iraq, 200 miles north of Baghdad.
Mrs Braidwood, archaeologist wife of the expedition’s director and mother of two children, who accompanied them, tells us how an expedition is planned and financed; how the staff is chosen, and supplies and equipment assembled, how the workmen who do the actual labour are hired and how the daily routine of living and working on the ‘dig’ is organized.
The object of the expedition was to seek evidence of the great change in man’s history from cave-dwelling savagery to the establishment of settled villages of farmers and herdsmen.
Mrs Braidwood, however, is as interested in the present as in the past, and her story of life in modern Kurdish villages is as readable as her account of the ‘dig’.
Linda Braidwood was educated at Wellesley and the Universities of Munich, Michigan, and Chicago. She is married to the archaeologist Robert J. Braidwood.
She herself is a staff member of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. In 1937-38,1947-48, and 1950-51 she was a member of its expeditions to Syria and Iraq. Between digging seasons she works on the Institute’s publications, and she is also an editorial advisor for Archaeology. | 
