The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973, Final Reports, Volume II

The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973, Final Reports, Volume II
Author: Ellen L. Kohler
Publisher: UPenn Museum of Archaeology
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1995-01-29
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780924171338

This volume contains the excavation report for 15 inhumation burials from the Phrygian site of Gordion in central Anatolia. These tombs, dating from the late eighth through the third quarter of the sixth century B.C., were excavated by The University Museum in 1950, 1951, 1955-1957, and 1969. The processes for internment through construction of tumulus are carefully detailed, followed by an analysis of associated finds. Chapters deal with a general overview of constructional methods, grave assemblages, and chronology. University Museum Monograph, 88

The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973

The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973
Author: Elspeth R.M. Dusinberre
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Museum
Total Pages: 760
Release: 2023-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 194905716X

This volume contains the excavation report for 12 cremation burials from the Phrygian site of Gordion in central Anatolia. These tombs, dating from the later seventh century to the third quarter of the 6th century BCE, were excavated by The University Museum between 1950 and 1969, and by the German brothers Alfred and Gustav Korte in 1900. The processes for interment through construction of tumulus and cremation procedure are carefully detailed, followed by an analysis of associated finds. Two tumuli of the Hellenistic period, both covering stone chambers with inhumation burials within, are included in an appendix. Further appendices discuss other specific materials excavated from the cremation burials. A discussion of the contemporary inhumation and cremation tumulus burials at Gordion in the Phrygian period, highlighting their continuities and significant differences, forms part of the conclusion, as does discussion of sociocultural developments at Gordion between ca. 650-525 BCE as illuminated by the mortuary remains. The tumuli afford insights into questions related to gender, religion, adult/child identity, trade, social status, ethnicity, transcultural affiliations, ceramic developments, jewelry manufacture, high-status artifact display (including ivory), feasting behaviors, animal sacrifice, hero cult, and widespread "killing" of artifacts associated with the cremation burials. This entirely new publication of Gordion's tumuli makes available at last the elite cremation burials of the later Middle and early Late Phrygian (Achaemenid) periods excavated by The University Museum. By including the two Korte tumuli, it provides a complete assemblage of the cremation tumuli at Gordion. They afford remarkable new insights into life, death, and an elaborate system of value at Gordion during this most turbulent century.

The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973, Final Reports, Volume IV

The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973, Final Reports, Volume IV
Author: G. Kenneth Sams
Publisher: UPenn Museum of Archaeology
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1994-01-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780924171185

The Early Phrygian period is the first phase of Iron Age habitation on the City Mound of Yassihuyuk-Gordion. Since it is the most extensively excavated site in central Anatolia, not only for this early period but for successive phases through the Hellenistic period, Gordion has the distinction of being the type-site of ancient Phrygia. In this comprehensive study of the ceramic evidence from the Early Phrygian period at Gordion, G. Kenneth Sams presents a thorough catalogue and discussion of the development of the shapes, wares and decorative motifs, and places the pottery in its broader cultural context. The publication is extensively illustrated with profile and roll-out drawings, and photographs. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars interested in Anatolian archaeology and the stylistic development of pottery. University Museum Monograph, 79

The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion

The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion
Author: C. Brian Rose
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2012-05-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1934536555

The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion argues that the history and archaeology of the site of Gordion, in central Turkey, have been misunderstood since the beginning of its excavation in the 1950s. The first excavation director, Rodney Young, found evidence for substantial destruction during the first decade of fieldwork; this was interpreted as proof that Gordion had been destroyed ca. 700 B.C. by the Kimmerians, a group of invaders from the Caucusus/Black Sea region, as attested in several ancient literary sources. During the last decade, however, renewed research on the archaeological evidence, within, above, and below the destruction level indicated that the catastrophe that destroyed much of Gordion occurred 100 years earlier, in 800 B.C., and was the result of a fire that quickly got out of control rather than a foreign invasion. This discovery requires a reassessment of Anatolian history during the entire first millennium B.C. and has serious implications for our understanding of the surrounding regions, such as Assyria, Syria, Greece, and Urartu, among others. The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion is the product of a multidisciplinary research program, with dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating working hand in hand with textual and artifact analysis, each of which is treated in a separate chapter in this volume. All of these categories of evidence point to the same conclusion and demonstrate that we need to look at Gordion, and much of the ancient Near East, in a completely new way. University Museum Monograph, 133

Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200-900 BCE)

Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200-900 BCE)
Author: Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 660
Release: 2024-05-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1479834637

New results and interpretations challenging the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200–900 BCE) presents select essays originating in a two-year research collaboration between New York University and Paris Sciences et Lettres. The contributions here offer new results and interpretations of the processes and outcomes of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age in three broad regions: Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and the Levant. Together, these challenge the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, followed by the regeneration of political powers. Current research on newly discovered or reinterpreted textual and material evidence from Western Asia instead suggests that this transition was characterized by a diversity of local responses emerging from diverse environmental settings and culture complexes, as evident in the case studies collected here in history, archaeology, and art history. The editors avoid particularism by adopting a regional organization, with the aim of identifying and tracing similar processes and outcomes emerging locally across the three regions. Ultimately, this volume reimagines the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition as the emergence of a set of recursive processes and outcomes nested firmly in the local cultural interactions of western Asia before the beginning of the new, unifying era of Assyrian imperialism.

Lydian Painted Pottery Abroad

Lydian Painted Pottery Abroad
Author: R. Gül Gürtekin-Demir
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1949057143

This book is the first major study of Lydian material culture at Gordion and also the first published monograph on Lydian painted pottery from any site excavation. Richly illustrated, it provides a comprehensive definition and analysis of Lydian ceramics based on stylistic, archaeological, and textual evidence, while thoroughly documenting the material's stratigraphic contexts. The book situates the ceramic corpus within its broader Anatolian cultural context and offers insights into the impact of Lydian cultural interfaces at Gordion. The Lydian pottery found at Gordion was largely produced at centers other than Sardis, the Lydian royal capital, although Sardian imports are also well attested and began to influence Gordion's material culture as early as the 7th century BCE, if not before. Following the demise of the Lydian kingdom, a more limited repertoire of Lydian ceramics demonstrably continued in use at Gordion into the Achaemenid Persian period in the late 6th and 5th centuries BCE. The material was excavated by Professor Rodney Young's team between 1950 and 1973 and is fully presented here for the first time. Ongoing research in the decades following Young's excavations has led to a more refined understanding of Gordion's archaeological contexts and chronology, and, consequently, we are now able to view the Lydian ceramic corpus within a more secure stratigraphic framework than would have been the case if the material had been published shortly after the excavations.

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia
Author: Sharon R. Steadman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1193
Release: 2011-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195376145

This title provides comprehensive overviews on archaeological philological, linguistic, and historical issues at the forefront of Anatolian scholarship in the 21st century.

Tracing the Indo-Europeans

Tracing the Indo-Europeans
Author: Birgit Anette Olsen
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2019-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1789252733

Recent developments in aDNA has reshaped our understanding of later European prehistory, and at the same time also opened up for more fruitful collaborations between archaeologists and historical linguists. Two revolutionary genetic studies, published independently in Nature, 2015, showed that prehistoric Europe underwent two successive waves of migration, one from Anatolia consistent with the introduction of agriculture, and a later influx from the Pontic-Caspian steppes which without any reasonable doubt pinpoints the archaeological Yamnaya complex as the cradle of (Core-)Indo-European languages. Now, for the first time, when the preliminaries are clear, it is possible for the fields of genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics to cooperate in a constructive fashion to refine our knowledge of the Indo-European homeland, migrations, society and language. For the historical-comparative linguists, this opens up a wealth of exciting perspectives and new working fields in the intersections between linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, for the archaeologists and geneticists, on the other hand, the linguistic contributions help to endow the material findings with a voice from the past. The present selection of papers illustrate the importance of an open interdisciplinary discussion which will gradually help us in our quest of Tracing the Indo-Europeans.

Agricultural Sustainability and Environmental Change at Ancient Gordion

Agricultural Sustainability and Environmental Change at Ancient Gordion
Author: John M. Marston
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 193453692X

This book publishes the results of 220 botanical samples from the 1993-2002 Gordion excavations directed by Mary Voigt. Together with Naomi Miller's 2010 volume (Gordion Special Studies 5), this book completes the publication of botanical samples from Voigt's excavations. The book aims to reconstruct agricultural decision making using archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from Gordion to describe environmental and agricultural changes at the site. John M. Marston argues that different political and economic systems implemented over time at Gordion resulted in patterns of agricultural decision making that were well adapted to the social setting of farmers in each period, but that these practices had divergent environmental impacts, with some regimes sponsoring sustainable agricultural practices and others leading to significant environmental change. The implications of this book are twofold: Gordion will now be one of the best published agricultural datasets from the entire Near East and, thus, serve as a valuable comparable dataset for regional synthesis of agricultural and environmental change, and the methods the author developed to reconstruct agricultural change at Gordion serves as tools to engage questions about the relationship between social and environmental change at sites worldwide. Other books address similar themes but none in the Near East address these themes in diachronic perspective such as we have at Gordion. University Museum Monograph, 145

The Gordion Wooden Objects, Volume 1 The Furniture from Tumulus MM (2-vol. set)

The Gordion Wooden Objects, Volume 1 The Furniture from Tumulus MM (2-vol. set)
Author: Elizabeth Simpson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 602
Release: 2010-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047442865

The Furniture from Tumulus MM, The Gordion Wooden Objects, volume 1, is a study of the furniture from the largest tomb at Gordion, Turkey, excavated in 1957 by the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The tomb dates to the eighth century BC and is thought to be the burial of the great Phrygian king Midas or his father. The objects, initially misunderstood, are now identified as nine tables, two serving stands, two stools, a chair, and an open log coffin. Three pieces are ornately carved and inlaid with religious symbols and complex geometric motifs. The wooden objects from Gordion are now recognized as the most important collection of well preserved wooden artifacts excavated from the Near East. Included in this volume are new photographs, reconstruction drawings, and eight scientific/technical appendices. Contributors include: Harry Alden, Burhan Aytuğ, Mary W. Ballard, Robert A. Blanchette, Roland Cunningham, Laure Dussubieux, Patrick E. McGovern, Benjamin Held, Walter Hopwood, Joseph Koles, Lynn E. Roller, Krysia Spirydowicz. "...this work goes well beyond a typical site-specific object catalogue and makes important contributions to a wide range of scholarly fields, both technical and conceptual, from textile and wood analysis to anthropological and religious studies." Elizabeth P. Baughan, University of Richmond “The book succeeds in its main aims of making available every scrap of information about the finds, and it illuminates form, techniques, and function in a most convincing and stimulating manner.” Catherine M. Draycott, Courtauld Institute of Art