Interdisciplinary teams investigating the origins of agriculture in the Eastern Fertile Crescent in the 1950s through 1970s considered the region a primary center of initial domestication and agricultural emergence. Political events then shifted the focus of archaeological investigation on agricultural origins to the Western Fertile Crescent. Decades of subsequent research appeared to indicate that the west was the earliest and most important center of agricultural origins in Southwest Asia, with the Eastern Fertile Crescent portrayed as a backwater that lagged behind transformative innovations from the west. The resumption of investigations in the east in the early 2000s, coupled with new scientific methods for documenting agricultural emergence, has reestablished the region as a heartland of domestication of both crop and livestock species. This broad topic is covered in two papers, beginning here with the history of this work from the 1950s through the early 2000s. The second paper will present a synthesis of recent work in the east, evaluating the continued relevance of early work in light of recent explanatory models for agricultural origins.

跨学科团队在 20 世纪 50 年代至 70 年代调查东部新月沃地的农业起源，认为该地区是最初驯化和农业兴起的主要中心。随后，政治事件将农业起源考古调查的焦点转移到了西部新月沃地。随后数十年的研究似乎表明，西方是西南亚最早、最重要的农业起源中心，而东部新月沃土被描绘成落后于西方变革性创新的死水。2000 年代初期在东部地区恢复调查，加上记录农业兴起的新科学方法，使该地区重新成为农作物和牲畜物种驯化的中心地带。两篇论文涵盖了这个广泛的主题，首先介绍了这部作品从 1950 年代到 2000 年代初的历史。第二篇论文将总结东部地区最近的工作，根据最近的农业起源解释模型评估早期工作的持续相关性。