author
Robert J. (Robert John) Braidwood
1907–2003
A pioneer of scientific archaeology, this American scholar helped change how researchers study the origins of farming and settled life. His work in the Near East brought together archaeology, anthropology, and the natural sciences in ways that shaped the field for decades.
1 Audiobook
Prehistoric Men
by Robert J. (Robert John) Braidwood
About the author
Born in Detroit in 1907, Robert J. Braidwood became one of the key figures in twentieth-century archaeology. He worked for many years at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute and built a reputation as a leading expert on the prehistory of the Near East.
Braidwood is especially remembered for investigating one of the biggest questions in human history: how hunting and gathering communities became farming societies. His fieldwork at sites in places such as Iraq and the Amuq Plain, along with later work connected to Jarmo, helped move archaeology beyond collecting artifacts and toward asking broader questions about everyday life, environment, and long-term human change.
He is often described as one of the founders of scientific archaeology because he encouraged teams of specialists to work together, bringing in evidence from fields like geology, botany, and zoology. That collaborative approach made his research especially influential, and his books and teaching introduced generations of readers to archaeology as a lively, evidence-based search for how people once lived.