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The article focuses on the Beyceğiz Tumulus, located 11.5 km east of Gordion, which was subjected to multiple looting attempts, leading to a salvage excavation conducted between 2013 and 2017. It reveals that the tumulus, identified as a cenotaph, contained no burial or ritual deposits but rather a stone platform at its center, surrounded by guide walls, highlighting the architectural and planning expertise involved in its construction.

In 2016, a project was undertaken at Gordion, Turkey, to stabilize and conserve the remains of a rubble platform built early in the Middle Phrygian period (ca. 800-700 B.C.E.) under the vast Gate Complex leading to the megarons on the Citadel Mound. In the process, aspects of Middle Phrygian building strategies came to light that enhanced our understanding gained from the original excavation in the 1950s. This article outlines the archaeology of the Middle Phrygian Gate Complex and the sophisticated internal structures that lent stability to the rubble platform upon which it was built, and examines the recent evaluation and stabilization of the remaining rubble. Internal walls that created a casemate-like structure, combined with strategically placed juniper logs, assisted with the construction of the rubble fill and its structural stability. The use of water-soluble gypsum in the rubble led to the eventual collapse of the walls in antiquity. Conservation and stabilization in 2016 illuminated these features, made the rubble safe again, and improved the visitor's experience of the site, allowing the gateway of the Early Phrygian period behind the Middle Phrygian Gate Complex to come into its own as a visible access point to the megarons within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of new excavation, remote sensing, and conservation activities at the Phrygian capital of Gordion in central Turkey. The most important discoveries were of Iron Age date and relate to Gordion s fortification system and city plan. Fieldwork focused on the southern side of the Citadel Mound, where excavation yielded a large Early Phrygian (ninth century B.C.E.) glacis or stepped terrace wall more than 2.5 m in height that supported a substantial fortification wall nearly 3 m wide. New fortifications dating to the Middle Phrygian (eighth century B.C.E.) and Late Phrygian (sixth century B.C.E.) periods were also uncovered in the same area, as was a new gateway leading into the citadel. A sondage beneath the Early Phrygian "Terrace Building Complex," or industrial quarter, produced traces of occupation during the Early Bronze Age, as well as evidence for the construction of an enormous terrace during the ninth century B.C.E. A new campaign of remote sensing clarified the street plan in Gordion's two residential districts (the Lower Town and "Outer Town"), in addition to revealing the presence of fortification walls, defensive ditches, and a large fort on the western side of the Outer Town. Conservation activities focused on the Terrace Building, the ninth-century B.C.E. pebble mosaic floor from Megaron 2, and the Early Phrygian Gate Complex, still the best-preserved citadel gate in Iron Age Asia Minor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the prevalent assumption that stringed instruments were absent from Phrygian music, tortoise-shell lyres excavated at Gordion show that such instruments were played in Phrygia during its heyday. Since the shells--or carapaces--are early and potentially the first from outside the Greek world, their identification is based on cautious analysis of worked edges, scrape marks, and a symmetrical pattern of drill holes that reveal details of the lyres' construction and zoomorphic aesthetic. Two well-preserved examples from an abandonment deposit in the cellar of an extramural house on Gordion's Northeast Ridge beneath Tumulus E can be dated stratigraphically to the first quarter of the seventh century B.C.E. This context of instruments and domestic artifacts preserves string music as the accompaniment to weaving, dining, and the worship of Matar (Cybele) in a prosperous household. These lyres clarify the musical culture of Anatolia, which is otherwise heavily abstracted in Greek myths and theoretical writings. Those instruments that Phrygia was best known for, the aulos and cymbals, are also materially and pictorially attested at Gordion, but the lyres expand the Phrygian soundscape to include a largely unknown polyphony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three longest inscriptions from Methone, which all seem to be in Eretrian script, are an important testimony to the diffusion of literacy across the Mediterranean world. They help us to reconstruct the prehistory of the Greek alphabet, which according to internal evidence went through three phases, from the simplest 'Cretan' script to Euboean, Roman and ultimately Ionian. Yet the earliest alphabetic inscriptions seem to come from Gabii in Latium and Gordion in Phrygia, a fact which contradicts the internal evidence that Greeks adapted the Phoenician script. Consistency returns only if one accepts a recent proposal to raise the chronology of the Middle and Late Geometric periods. The finds from Methone confirm that Euboean script was already well adapted to the recording of complex texts such as epic poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with staff member Kathryn R. Morgan at the Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli in Turkey of the University of Chicago and the Gordion project of the University of Pennsylvania is presented. Topics discussed include the overview of their excavation project at Gordion with excavation director Rodney Young, the Terrace Building is one of the buildings that excavated by Young in the 1960s, and how she organised her excavation team.

Few archaeobotanical studies of Roman agricultural practices and their environmental impact in Anatolia (modern Turkey) have been published. New data from Roman levels at Gordion, a multi-period urban centre in central Anatolia, indicate that free-threshing wheat, most likely Triticum aestivum (bread wheat), was the focus of agricultural practice, in contrast to earlier periods when a more diverse agricultural system included greater amounts of barley and pulses. Evidence for increased levels of irrigation and wood fuel use relative to dung, along with regional overgrazing, provide further evidence for significant change in land-use practices during the Roman period. The emphasis on T. aestivum cultivation coupled with extensive grazing had significant environmental implications, leading to severe overgrazing and soil erosion on a regional scale. Historical sources and limited data from other Roman period sites suggest that similar patterns of agriculture may have been practiced across central Anatolia during the Roman period. We propose that this may have been due to externally imposed demands for taxation or military tribute in the form of wheat, and conclude that these demands led to the adoption of an unsustainable agricultural system at Gordion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of agriculture in the Near East during the middle Holocene significantly altered the physical landscape. However, the relationship between the scale of agriculture and the magnitude and timing of the environmental impacts is not well known. The Gordion Regional Survey provides a novel dataset to compare settlement density during archaeological periods to rates of environmental disruption. Sediment samples from alluvial cores directly date the environmental disruption, which can be matched to period-specific settlement intensities in the watershed as constructed from archaeological survey ceramics. Degradation rates rose sharply within a millennium of the earliest Chalcolithic occupation. Early Bronze Age (EBA) land use induced the greatest rates of environmental degradation, although settlement density was relatively low on the landscape. The degradation rate subsequently decreased to one-third its early peak by the Iron Age, even as settlement intensity climbed. This trajectory reveals how complex interaction effects can amplify or subdue the responses of the landscape–land use system. Prior to settlement, landscape soil reservoirs were highly vulnerable, easily tipped by early agricultural expansion. Subsequent reduced rates of erosion are tied both to changes in sociopolitical organization and to depletion of the vulnerable soil supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Conservation Management Plan for Gordion and its Environs has been developed by a multidisciplinary team within a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania (both the School of Design and Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) and Middle East Technical University (Faculty of Architecture) in Ankara. The project has involved a new approach to the protection of cultural material at the site itself, as well as the survey and documentation of a 140 km2 area, with Gordion as its centre, to include the village of Yassıhöyük and five nearby villages, historic sites, höyüks, or settlement mounds, and tumuli, or burial mounds. The project utilized photographs and standardized forms in the documentation of public and private buildings and areas. Based on this survey, the values of the site and its environs were reassessed, and an action plan presented for all project stakeholders. One of the primary stakeholders is the local population, who must be made aware of the damaging effects of deep ploughing to the tumuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current understanding of the Iron Age polity of Phrygia in Central Anatolia is primarily based on excavations and survey in the region of the Phrygian capital of Gordion. In order to expand our knowledge of the Phrygian polity, we assess the scale and nature of Iron Age communities in the western (Eskişehir) region of Phrygia. We address the challenge of interpreting ceramics derived from large-scale archaeological survey by utilizing Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) of ceramics from 12 sites across the region collected by the Eskişehir archaeological survey project as well as an excavated assemblage from Şar Höyük. While the uniformity in ceramic technology and styles suggest the region is part of the larger Phrygian community, NAA results reveal that (a) ceramic production was regionally highly localized with limited evidence of standardization during the Iron Age and (b) based on evidence of community interaction it is possible to establish a partial chronological sequence of development. These results have implications not only for understanding the internal dynamics within the Phrygian core but also for developing a methodology for comparing ancient polities using commensurate units of interacting communities. The present study is part of the larger Anatolian Iron Age Ceramics project (). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological study of ancient agriculture in the. eastern Mediterranean has traditionally focused on what crops were farmed, at what sites, during which periods. Questions about why farmers adopted specific agricultural strategies, however, have been left to historical analysis. Such an approach divorces the study of the actual residues of farming from the cultural and social environments that contextualize the decision-making processes of farmers. Rich new archaenbotanical and zooarchaeological data sets from the Mediterranean, however, offer an opportunity to reconstruct agricultural and land-use strategies and to study diachronic changes in those practices in relation to contemporary changes in political economy. This article uses the case study of the urban site of Gordion in central Anatolia to illustrate new techniques for reconstructing agricultural decision making from archaeological data and to contextualize diachronic changes in agriculture within their social and economic framework. I argue that several aspects of political economy—namely, taxation, long-distance trade, and settlement patterns—are primary factors in the adoption of specific agricultural strategies at Gordion and beyond. I conclude that states with direct control of agricultural production are more likely to adopt environmentally unsustainable land-use practices than those in which farmers have considerable autonomy. The methods and broader implications developed here have great relevance for the study of agriculture and rural economy at other sites in the Mediterranean and Near East and in other areas of the ancient world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the seventh and sixth centuries bc parallels observed between Daskyleion and Gordion regarding trade amphoras imply that common ports and routes were used by these settlements. These similarities, as far as the transfer of goods to settlements in the inner part of Anatolia are concerned, place a special emphasis on the Hellespontine-Phrygia route to the southern ports of Propontis. During this period, this route supplied Greek goods to Phrygia on an equal level to the contemporary Ionia-Sardes route. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Managing agricultural risk, or variance in annual production, is a priority for farmers and herders. This article reviews the ethnographic and historical literature on agricultural risk management and identifies diversification and intensification as two distinct approaches to managing risk. Quantitative analysis of plant and animal remains from archaeological sites produces robust datasets that can be used to test predictions of risk management models related to diversification and intensification strategies. I present a variety of established and novel paleoethnobotanical and zooarchaeological measures that have implications for risk management and argue that multiple lines of evidence are needed to identify risk-management practices from archaeological remains. The article concludes with a case study of the multiperiod urban center of Gordion in central Turkey, where quantitative analysis of plant and animal remains demonstrates diachronic changes in agricultural risk management over 3000years of occupation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article focuses on the city of Gordion which is an archaeological and a heritage site in Turkey. It states that Gordion is located approximately 70 kilometers southwest of Ankara which was the center of the Phrygian kingdom. It mentions that the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology conducted excavations at Gordion since 1950.

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The article focuses on the preliminary report and the context regarding the discovery of inscriptions from Tumulus MM in Gordion, Turkey in 2007. It says that the excavation of Tumulus MM by then director Rodney S. Young of Gordion project in 1957, found out that the tomb chamber is sealed with roof beams and was likely occupied by the father of King Midas. Elizabeth Simpson notes that the tomb chamber was deposited with utensils used from the funeral banquet including the bronze bowls that have inscribed names called ATA, UZD, SI↑IDOSAKOR. It mentions that Phyrigian grafitti on the setting of the roof beam of tomb chamber has shown the inscribed Phrygian names called NANA, MUKSOS, SI↑IDOS, and URUNIS based from the further investigations in 2008.

The article discusses the Conversion Management Plan (CMP) that could help Gordion and its environment recover from its poor condition caused by the post-excavation exposure to natural elements and regional rural development all over the ancient landscape. It states that ensuring that Gordion subscribe to the plan would make people feel they were the stakeholders in its success. It also states that the plan will succeed if it is multi-disciplinary and if the local officials will cooperate.

The site of Gordion, Turkey, provides a case study of the integrated use of archaeobiological data, Associations between botanical and fauna! remains suggest a continuum of land-use practices. At one end, high ratios of the seeds of wild plants versus cultivated cereal grains (calculated as count/weight) and high proportions of the bones of sheep, goat, and deer are signatures of a subsistence economy focused on pastoral production. At the other, low wild/cereal ratios along with high proportions of the bones of cattle, pig, and hare indicate an economy more focused on agriculture. Based on the millennium-long sequence analyzed, the most sustainab!e land use around the ancient settlement emphasized pastoral production; only during the wealthy Middle Phrygian period did high population support greater reliance on agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Archaeological charcoal remains are often used to reconstruct local woodland composition in the past, but rarely address how and why people may have selected specific woody taxa for particular purposes. Models from the field of human behavioral ecology predict that people forage for wood resources by taking into account the relative usefulness, abundance, and handling time related to procuring different wood types. Archaeological and ecological data from the site of Gordion, in Central Anatolia (modern Turkey), were used to test expectations associated with such models. Results suggest that inhabitants of Gordion used wood types for fuel in proportion to their local availability, but that they selected specific, more distant woods for construction. In most occupation periods pine was preferred for construction, perhaps because it produces long, straight timbers for roofing, despite the distance at which it grows from the site. This case study demonstrates that behavioral ecology modeling can help to distinguish between multiple wood acquisition strategies potentially used in the past and improve our understanding of wood use from archaeological charcoal remains. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Phrygian Gordion was the political center of an influential Iron Age polity that extended across west central Anatolia during the first half of the 1st millennium BC. Though the borders of this polity remain vague a characteristic of the Phrygian “footprint” is the distribution of highly distinctive ceramics. The extent to which Gordion potters were the originators of these wares remains uncertain. In this paper we use Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to establish the local signature of predominantly Iron Age ceramics for this site by combining samples from several decades of excavation with an extensive regional sediment sequence. We also compare previous NAA work at Gordion to suggest that the formative stages of the Phrygian state appears to have involved a more extensive network of non-local specialist producers than previously thought. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article focuses on the contribution provided by Piet de Jong, archaeological illustrator, to the excavations of the tumuli, Midas Mound, at Gordion. Two of the most famous objects of the Mound, the ram-and lion-headed bronze situlae, were drawn by de Jong. Rodney S. Young, director of the excavations, had invited the illustrator to prepare a series of drawings of artifacts and to reconstruct wall paintings in the Painted House.

The article offers information on the history of Gordion where the German brothers, Alfred and Gustav Körte, conducted the first excavation series for the area in 1900. The major periods of Gordion include the Iron Age, Achaemid, and Hellenistic. The latter saw Gordion being used as a military base for the expeditionary force of Alexander the Great in the conquest of the Persian Empire. The excavation series of the Pennsylvania Museum between 1950 and 1973 was directed by Rodney S. Young.

The article focuses on the discovery of two marble altars in Gordion on 2008 as one has an inscription which honors the roman emperor known as Caracalla. The archaeological team of the Pennsylvania Museum found the ancient artifacts. The latter are virtually identical as features include a height of slightly over one meter, square cross-section, and an upper zone of moldings in the flat top. The Roman Empire between 212 and 217 CE was ruled by Caracalla.

The article focuses on the use of modern digital technologies by the Pennsylvania Museum and the Gordion Archaeological Project in the development of the online research tool, Digital Gordion. The latter incorporates data on the excavations at Gordion that will be interconnected in a complex web of relationships. Contents of the Gordion Archive were scanned and formatted. The essential components of the Archive include field notebooks, photographs, and drawings of artifacts.

The article offers information about the excavated artifacts found during the Gordion Project in Turkey. Aside from the physical development and economic function of the region, the project also provides a wider understanding on the presence of Roman military forces across the area. Accordingly, the excavation project recovered various material culture including Roman armor, weapons and bronze objects.

Examines the nitrogen cycling by wood decomposing soft-rot fungi in the 'King Midas tomb,' in Gordion, Turkey. Patterns of degradation and stable nitrogen isotope values; Determination of the sources of nutrients of the fungal community; Correlation between polysaccharides and lignin.

At the archaeological site of Gordion, Turkey, all registered ceramics are routinely desalinated. The standard desalination treatment was investigated by the author with a View to minimizing damage to the ceramics, as well as the amount of water used and the time taken for desalination. An equation that standardizes conductivity measurements in disparate desalination situations is presented A series of experiments was performed to clarify the behavior of salts at Gordion. Two variables which directly affect the amount of water needed for desalination were considered: the frequency of water changes and the weight-to-volume ratio. The experimental results were Compared to on-site experience, and a revised endpoint for desalination is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's excavations of the tomb of Midas, king of the ancient city of Gordion in Turkey. Rodney S. Young's leadership of the project in the 1950s; Description of Midas' remains and the contents of his tomb; Preservation of the tomb's ancient organic materials; Re-creation of the traditional funerary banquet inside the tomb.

Geomorphic research at Gordion, an Anatolian Iron-Age city, shows alluvial burial and extensive leveling by the Sakarya River starting prior to the 4th century B.C. The aggrading river eventually buried parts of the city under 3-5 m of silt, beginning during occupation. Subsequent river movements eroded away substantial parts of the site, including 2 km of outer wall. Buried and removed parts of the site total three times the area now visible on the river plain. These alterations, not readily apparent from the surface, were not investigated during previous archaeological research. The site provides the most precise evidence to date about the Beyşehir Occupational phase, a widespread episode of sedimentation affecting SW and central Anatolia beginning in the Iron Age, apparently caused by wee-cutting and over-grazing. The likely equivalent disturbance event at Gordion extends this episode into a new region, is associated directly with an archaeological site, and has a later onset and end. Because the modern channel of the Sakarya has recently been dredged to several meters below its floodplain, Gordion provides an unusually clear display of an alluvially buried city, whose occupants made numerous responses to the rapidly changing river. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent excavation at the ancient city of Gordion in central western Turkey has recovered part of the collapsed terracotta tile roof of a large Hellenistic building built in the third century BC. The roofing system consisted of large rectangular pan tiles and long half-round cover tiles. The evidence from ethnographic and historical accounts of tile production, forming and finishing methods, and chemical composition determined by neutron activation analysis has yielded insights into the organization of this coarse-ware ceramic industry, its use of local resources, and its relationship to the other ceramic industries serving the city and the local economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the study about the unpublished tiles situated in Phrygian settlement of Gordion at Sakarya River in Ankara, Turkey. The report revealed the interesting and uncommon roof design on the proper setting of tiles. Historically, the city of Gordion was the capital of the Phrygian kingdom of Midas in 8th century B.C., however, it suffered catastrophe in fire that destroyed the roof tiles. Furthermore, the identification of the spouted-eaves-tile roof system at the city started to modify its significance for the tile industry implies the development of ideas and technology.

The article presents a study about the cult of the Phrygian Mother goddess and its transmission throughout the Greek and Roman world. It examines the process of Hellenization of the Mother goddess in Gordion and in central Anatolia, following Alexander's conquests. Several aspects of this phenomenon, including the source of the Greek iconography representing the goddess in Hellenistic Gordion, the adoption of the Greek image at Gordion, and the effect of the change in religious iconography on actual religious practice, are discussed.

Focuses on archaeological work in the extinct city of Gordion in Turkey. Lack of archaeological knowledge about the Phrygian people, who were at the acme of their military and political power under King Midas; Restudy of the chronology of Midas' tomb; Surveys of the environs of Gordion; Description of the archaeological work conducted by Rodney Young.

The article focuses on the processing of documents collected from the office of Keith DeVries, a curator in the Penn Museum's Mediterranean Section (1972-2004). It states that some of his documents remained unclassified and brought to Gareth Darbyshire, Gordion Project Archivist, for final identification.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, August 7–August 11, 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article provides information on the significance of the archaeological discovery by several archaeologists headed by Frank G. Maestro in Gordion, Turkey. The experiment aims to impart the knowledge on the importance of the people from the past and in the present who used their hands. It was discovered that the seed-filled mudballs manifest the practice of the Pueblo Indian farmers while the bionical whorls manifest the skills and the knowledge of the ancient spinsters in East.