This important contribution to the study of Phrygian religious practice and spatial conceptualizations examines the role of the rock-cut monuments in Iron Age Anatolian and provides the reader with new aspects and theories of Phrygian cult and the Mother goddess Kybele.
In 1950, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology began excavations at the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordion in central Turkey. The Museum's Gordion Project continues today, with researchers from many disciplines and with many specializations contributing to a growing—and sometimes changing—body of information and understanding about this complex and multifaceted site, inhabited by peoples and diverse civilizations for millennia. In this volume of Gordion Special Studies, Lynn E. Roller focuses on a series of stone blocks with incised figural and abstract drawings recovered from early Phrygian structures at Gordion. The great majority of the incised stones come from a single structure within the Early Phrygian citadel at Gordion known as Megaron 2, a stone building with several remarkable features and a likely candidate for the citadel's temple. The volume begins with a description of the excavation of the stones and a discussion of Megaron 2. Next is an analysis of the subject matter of the drawings by type, describing scenes of human figures, animals, architectural drawings, geometric patterns, and formless marks. A discussion follows of the sources from which the drawings could have been taken and of parallels with similar scenes and designs on objects in other media from Gordion and other contemporary sites in Anatolia. The fourth section proposes an explanatory hypothesis on the origin of the drawings, and considers who could have made them and why. Parallels with comparable drawings from Anatolia and the Near East are discussed here. The final section summarizes the contribution of the drawings to our understanding of the development of the Early Phrygian material at Gordion. University Museum Monograph, 130
In this book, rock-cut and underground structures of Koramaz Valley on the Anatolian Plateau in Turkey are described in detail. The valley; located in eastern Turkey near the town of Kayseri, has hundreds of rock-cut structures, in addition to several underground cities, and almost none of them have been studied before. Research conducted by a team from 2014 to 2020, resulted in this overview of all the rock-cut and underground structures in and around seven different settlements in the valley and aims for the physical documentation and inventory of all these structures. The book studies cliff settlements, rock-cut churches, underground cities, and funerary architecture in the valley. These shelters are estimated to have been built between the 7th and 10th centuries and even the smallest of these structures offer rich details for architectural, socio-cultural and historical studies. The rock-cut churches date to the Byzantine Empire period and during the research period, over 400 of these structures were explored, surveyed, and mapped in the region and with all these historical and natural values. Recently, the Koramaz Valley was accepted to the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list. This book is of interest to archaeologists and scholars of built heritage.
Some of the most dramatic new discoveries in Asia Minor have been made at Gordion, the Phrygian capital that controlled much of central Asia Minor for close to two centuries. The most famous ruler of the kingdom was Midas, who regularly negotiated with Greeks in the west and Assyrians in the east during his reign. Excavations have been conducted at Gordion over the course of the last 60 years, all under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In spite of the economic and political importance of Gordion and the Phrygians, the site is consistently omitted from courses in Old World archaeology, primarily because Gordion lies too far to the west for many Near Eastern archaeologists, and too far to the east for classical archaeologists. Moreover, there is no book that offers a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the material culture of Gordion during the Phrygian period, a gap that will be filled by this volume. The chapters cover all aspects of Gordion's Phrygian settlement topography from the arrival of the Phrygians in the tenth century B.C. through the arrival of Alexander the Great in 333 B.C., focusing on the site's changing topography and the consistently fluctuating interaction between the inhabitants and the landscape. A reexamination of the material culture of Phrygian Gordion is particularly timely, given the dramatic recent changes in the site's chronology, wherein the dates of many discoveries have changed by as much as a century. The authors are among the leading experts in Near Eastern archaeology, historic preservation, paleobotany, and ancient furniture, and their articles highlight the interdisciplinary nature of the Gordion project. A significant component of the book is a new color phase plan of the site that succinctly presents the topography in diachronic perspective.
A Companion to Ancient Thrace presents a series of essays that reveal the newly recognized complexity of the social and cultural phenomena of the peoples inhabiting the Balkan periphery of the Classical world. • Features a rich and detailed overview of Thracian history from the Early Iron Age to Late Antiquity • Includes contributions from leading scholars in the archaeology, art history, and general history of Thrace • Balances consideration of material evidence relating to Ancient Thrace with more traditional literary sources • Integrates a study of Thrace within a broad context that includes the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, southwest Asia, and southeast Europe/Eurasia • Reflects the impact of new theoretical approaches to economy, ethnicity, and cross-cultural interaction and hybridity in Ancient Thrace
The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella, edited by Elizabeth Simpson, is a Festschrift celebrating the career of one of the foremost archaeologists of the ancient Near East. Oscar Muscarella is a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a formidable scholar who has excavated at sites in Turkey, Iran, and the United States. He has published eight books and nearly 200 articles, excavation reports, and reviews on topics ranging from the arts of antiquity and the importance of connoisseurship, to the difficulties of dating and the problems of forgeries, the looting of ancient sites, and the antiquities trade. The forty-seven contributors are experts in the areas of Muscarella’s interests and are major scholars in their fields. This volume constitutes an unusual, important, and timely addition to the archaeological and art historical literature.
This book explores archaeological excavations and investigations into the history of the Lykos valley, Turkey. The contributions discuss the latest discoveries at the Ploutonion of Hierapolis; the excavations of the tabernae in Tripolis; the Lykos Valley in prehistory and the second millennium BC; the origins of the marble used in Hierapolis; and archaeo-botanic studies in Hierapolis, among others. Taken together, all the articles gathered here reveal the strong connections between the cities of the valley.
This volume brings together scholars in religion, archaeology, philology, and history to explore case studies and theoretical models of converging religions. The twenty-four essays offered in this volume, which derive from Hittite, Cilician, Lydian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman cultural settings, focus on encounters at the boundaries of cultures, landscapes, chronologies, social class and status, the imaginary, and the materially operative. Broad patterns ultimately emerge that reach across these boundaries, and suggest the state of the question on the study of convergence, and the potential fruitfulness for comparative and interdisciplinary studies as models continue to evolve.