Ancient Gordion

The subject of this book is the archaeology of Gordion, modern Yassıhöyük, located in Polatlı province in Türkiye, roughly 100 km west of the modern Turkish capital of Ankara. Gordion’s heyday was in the Middle Iron Age, ca. 900–600 BCE, when it was the seat of the mytho-historical King Midas of Phrygia, generally thought to have ruled in the latter half of the eighth century BCE (a date based on a concordance of Greco-Roman and Assyrian historical sources). Much like the stories of Midas’s golden touch, however, the term “Phrygia” appears only in later Greek and Roman sources. We do not know how the Phrygians identified themselves—if indeed by “Phrygians” we mean the people responsible for the material culture we associate with Iron Age Gordion, rather than speakers of the Phrygian language or members of an ethnic group mentioned briefly by Herodotus (Historiae 7.73). Some might go so far as to question whether they did so identify, or at what point. Recent debates have in fact revealed that, despite nearly 75 years of sustained archaeological research at the Phrygian capital of Gordion (not to mention elsewhere in Anatolia), there is strikingly little scholarly consensus as to the extent or duration of Midas’s kingdom, its political organization, or the nature of its interactions with other Iron Age groups and polities (see, recently, Summers 2023, with references).The renewal of these debates in recent years has been fueled in part by an admirable emphasis on publication of the Gordion project under new director Brian Rose (since 2012), which has made both current and previous excavation results much more visible and accessible (including via the annual Friends of Gordion field report, available online: https://www.penn.museum/sites/gordion/resources/field-reports/). At the same time, the gradual saturation of central and southeastern Anatolia with anthropological and Near Eastern archaeologists has begun to pay dividends on the plateau, bringing both new theoretical and historical frameworks as well as fresh data to Phrygia’s doorstep, traditionally the purview of classical archaeologists. For example, the 2018 discovery at Türkmen-Karahöyük in Konya province of an inscription in hieroglyphic Luwian describing its author, Hartapu, as “conqueror of the land of Muška,” has seemingly confirmed that this was not just the Assyrian but also the Anatolian word for what the Greeks called Phrygia, as had long been suspected. It also, tantalizingly, hints at broader entanglements among central Anatolian polities, earlier in the Iron Age than previously thought, that remain as yet little known archaeologically (Goedegebuure et al. 2020; Hawkins and Weeden 2021).Presented as a study of “the development and negotiation of Iron Age group identities” (2), Ancient Gordion is therefore timely, though it largely avoids direct engagement with the historical context summarized above. As the first monograph on the site by Mary M. Voigt, professor emerita of anthropology at the College of William & Mary and Gordion project field director from 1988–2006, the volume seeks to establish a cohesive archaeological narrative for the Late Bronze through Late Iron Age periods at Gordion (local YHSS phases 10–4, or roughly 1500–330 BCE), drawing on a wide range of data including architecture, ceramics, faunal and botanical material, and small finds. In so doing, it synthesizes previously published results from Voigt’s excavations with those of her predecessor, Rodney S. Young, Gordion project director from 1950–1973, collated from his preliminary reports and field notes; it further presents, in places, additional unpublished results from the Voigt campaigns.That alone represents sufficient material for one if not multiple volumes; but in keeping with the goals of the series in which it is published—Cambridge’s Case Studies in Early Societies, edited by Rita P. Wright—the book has the additional task of demonstrating “a contemporary method of archaeological analysis in action,” which in this case is Neutron Activation Analysis of archaeological ceramics, or NAA. NAA is a minimally invasive analytical technique that identifies elemental concentrations in vessel fabrics. With a sufficiently robust body of reference material, the method can not only allow the identification of local vs. nonlocal production centers or workshops but also define the specific geographic provenance of vessels, providing an empirical basis for discussions of trade, exchange, mobility, and connectivity in the past (Riehle et al. 2023). Proponents of the technique nonetheless caution that it “should never simply replace macroscopic classifications,” since similar chemical footprints can be found in geographically disparate areas (among other caveats; see Riehle et al. 2023). NAA is the expertise of Ancient Gordion co-authors Lisa Kealhofer (Santa Clara University) and Peter Grave (University of New England, Australia), who, under the auspices of their Anatolian Iron Ages (AIA) project (2003–2008) sampled ceramics from key Iron Age sites across Anatolia, including Kaman-kalehöyük, Çadır Höyük, and Troy, in addition to Gordion, where they led a regional survey (1996–2001). These results were published in a series of preliminary reports between 2009 and 2013, mainly in the Journal of Archaeological Science, but Ancient Gordion is the first place where a broader synthesis of these data appears, with a view toward establishing region-wide exchange patterns as well as longue durée trends in local resource use, socioeconomic organization, and elite self-expression at Gordion itself.The abundance of this new data set and the numerous charts and tables included to aid its interpretation make this volume an important resource for specialists interested in new approaches to understanding the complex interactions and movements of people during what the authors rightly emphasize was a transformational period in Anatolia and around the Mediterranean basin. This same complexity poses a challenge to the more casual reader, however. The authors adopt the rather abstract theoretical framework of “group formation in archaeology” to accommodate the significant and frequent changes taking place over the thousand years their study encompasses, arguing in their introduction (Ch. 1) for the crucial insight into “the nature of transformations in human societies” that such processes yield and the potential that long-lived and -excavated sites such as Gordion offer in this regard. They summarize a wide array of previous approaches to the study of “groups” in Chapter 2, “Inventing Identity,” including technology and materiality, interaction and style, production, consumption, resource distribution, and cultural transmission. The discussion draws on both Old World and New World case studies, emphasizing the archaeological legibility of group identity over that of the individual as well as its highly fluid, situationally triggered, relational nature (identities, not identity). Ultimately, the authors advocate for their particular focus on ceramics, “a ubiquitous materialization of group formation and maintenance” (28), and more specifically the chemical signatures of different ware groups, which they construe as a type of technological style, as a means of visualizing the layering of these social groups and their complex interplay as they appear, disappear, expand, and contract over time. They promote this approach as a path toward a middle-ground reconstruction of ancient society that is neither monolithic nor composed exclusively of individuals within networks (27–28). The more granular view of group dynamics afforded by NAA, when considered alongside “intersecting lines of tangible evidence” (28), the authors argue, can help generate “new insights into the practices of power” at Gordion (28).A fresh take on power dynamics at Gordion is past due, as I have explained elsewhere (Morgan 2018, 2024). The potential of Kealhofer, Grave, and Voigt’s particular approach to establish a link between these concerns—group dynamics/power and ceramics/NAA—as well as some of its limitations become more apparent in Chapters 3 and 4, which detail the history of excavations (“Contextualizing the Ceramic Assemblage”) and methodology (“Identifying Gordion’s Groups”), respectively. Gordion was first excavated in 1900; under Rodney Young, in the 1950s and 1960s, the scale of the earth-moving was such that a railway was used to cart away soil, and so many intact objects and vessels emerged from the monumental buildings of the Early Phrygian Destruction Level—which became the focus of the excavations and was exposed across more than two hectares—that, especially in later years, anything without a recognizable profile was reportedly discarded. Young oversaw the excavation of over 30 of ca. 100 known tumuli, razing several to the ground (a practice that would be condemned today). His outsized personality and untimely death in a car accident in 1974 left much of this material unpublished. When Voigt resumed excavations in 1988, her major goal was to establish a stratigraphic sequence that could help resolve some of the chronological inconsistencies that specialists had begun to observe; study of ceramics but also ivories, bronzes, iron, figurines, and more was ongoing in the 1970s and 1980s under the directorship of Keith DeVries and then G. Kenneth Sams, through the Voigt campaigns, and it continues today. Voigt was successful in this goal: her work was instrumental in redating the Early Phrygian Destruction Level—one of the few fixed points in Iron Age Anatolian archaeology—to the late ninth century BCE from ca. 700 (Rose and Darbyshire 2011). She furthermore pioneered the systematic collection of plant and animal remains at Gordion and was the first to sample strata beyond the Eastern Citadel Mound, opening trenches on the Western Mound and in the Lower and Outer Towns. By necessity, these exposures were significantly smaller than Young’s, though their recording was far more meticulous, allowing for a broader reconstruction of socioeconomic organization and subsistence strategies in Phrygian society, at least in certain periods.The differences, therefore, between the Young and Voigt campaigns, in terms of goals, methods, sampling strategies, and potential biases, cannot be overstated. This makes NAA an interesting choice of methodology with the potential to bridge some of these imbalances; but the problem of the disparities among the available datasets for each period is insufficiently addressed in the volume, leaving open questions of how meaningful the comparison across periods undertaken in Ancient Gordion can truly be. The issue is primarily one of scale: Late Bronze Age? (1500–1150 BCE) and Early Iron Age (1150–900 BCE) contexts represent ca. 300–400 m2, compared to ca. 3,000 m2 for the Early Phrygian period (900–800 BCE; see table 3.1). But there are also problems of depositional context and sampling strategy: Early Phrygian remains were in situ within a single elite precinct, with the most extraordinary vessels selected for; Middle and Late Phrygian materials come from test trenches all over the site, and often from trash deposits. By necessity, the kinds of inferences one can make about the interactions of groups and the “practices of power” vary significantly in those contexts.Even for the well-controlled Early Phrygian period, these differences have proven challenging in the past, albeit to those implementing more traditional approaches. The two individuals who previously undertook systematic study of the Early Phrygian ceramic assemblage—G. Kenneth Sams, for the Young campaigns, and Robert Henrickson, for the Voigt excavations—came to vastly different conclusions about the scale and organization of ceramic production during that period, with Sams’s (1994) work on the larger assemblage underlining stylistic and typological diversity, while Henrickson, whose sample was limited to the anteroom of one building, saw in it the mass production and standardization characteristic of “a large-scale industry” (2001: 37). The latter had significant influence on Voigt’s repeated insistence on the “strongly hierarchical,” centralized nature of the Early Phrygian social and political system (2013: 189)—though with this volume Voigt and her co-authors seem to have abandoned that position.In some ways this is the best-case scenario for what archaeometric studies such as Kealhofer and Grave’s can do: shed new light on, or help resolve inconsistencies in, models based on more traditional types of analysis. To return to the Early Phrygian period—by far the best-attested at the site overall—NAA reveals an explosion of “groups” (i.e., of new ceramic sources) in the late tenth / early ninth century BCE, as discussed in Chapter 7, “New Identities, New Communities” (see especially 208–9 and fig. 7.20). Local and local/regional as well as nonlocal groups increase, in both number and diversity, compared to the preceding Late Bronze / Early Iron Age (YHSS 9/8 and 7), greatly substantiating Sams’s early hypothesis that the pottery from Gordion that we call “Phrygian” was produced in a variety of workshops scattered across a wide area (Sams 1994: 37). I myself commented on the significance of this concordance (Morgan 2018: 214–15; Morgan, forthcoming), with reference to the preliminary NAA results Grave et al. published in 2009, because its suggestion of a heterogeneous population and rather decentralized sociopolitical structure ran counter to the then generally held view that Gordion’s Early Phrygian citadel was the manifestation of a “well-organized and powerful state” organized around a shared ethnicity (Sams 2011: 611). It was and remains my contention that Early Phrygian Gordion can be better understood as a place of elite competition and incipient group identity formation, largely in the context of public feasts. On the basis of a similar reanalysis of the Early Phrygian archaeological record to that presented in Ancient Gordion, I argued that a ritual mode of production on the citadel (Morgan 2018: which was in to accommodate and to the of a shared Phrygian political identity (Morgan 2018: is to see the authors of Ancient Gordion taking these and of an including the political reconstruction I Gordion’s represents a period of in the century BCE, by a return to elite in the smaller of the later ninth and early eighth (Morgan 2018: see Kealhofer, Grave, and Voigt if they do not reference their The between archaeology and is at its when used to questions that can Some of the more discussion of trends in the NAA is however, or at least to group the authors in their discussion of geographic in Chapter is a of a group of Gordion that the authors in west Anatolia based on the to ceramics sampled there by a group based in for their many the that considered we from this there were “Phrygian” at were Phrygian or this with for at stylistic or typological from Anatolia this for the of these the authors of this volume test their questions such as the issue of whether other were produced at Gordion, which highly is not addressed the much later discussion of Early Phrygian that the is with more traditional of ceramic a of Phrygian their and have a that in the on Gordion and would have to some of the the conclusions presented with which similar questions is nonetheless an of how this material to In Chapter 4, the authors the that the chemical signatures they associate with production local to and which have at But in Chapter 7, the authors that of the sampled Early Phrygian assemblage into a that or and to the they as a that “the Gordion elite well have and with from and the that became This scenario is and but without from points we are left as to the and the nature of that it or or if did the Gordion elite in this of between the Gordion and datasets some the stylistic apparent in the few ceramic that are and presented in the of 7), which come from Gordion and two sites to the and Çadır only a to each all are with but the Gordion are with a and detail of and a rather than or like the it is that the from all sites a similar the that they from the same is not It is that so few of the identified are included in the 3 of the are they are an important aid to understanding the without it is to the inferences about group which they are highly complex and challenging to under the of away from the theoretical and and are organized each local as its case Chapters and the though Late Bronze and Early Iron Age from Gordion that a of into the in the Late Bronze Age (YHSS BCE), by a major in socioeconomic organization by the of a new group or groups in the Early Iron Age (YHSS 7, The authors previous of this material as demonstrating a cultural between these emphasizing a of material that a limited of across this For example, NAA of certain a much of with a geographic in the Early Iron Age (see fig. and the Early (YHSS BCE) and Middle (YHSS BCE) Phrygian As discussed the reconstruction of Early Phrygian Gordion significantly Voigt and that an is in the archaeological record at this if not emphasizing “group and “group with as a of “group It is underlining that in addition to the explosion of “groups” (i.e., ceramic sources) in this period and the strikingly of nonlocal the data an of among ware types in the Early Phrygian all are across is there between and This that was their in their of Gordion’s despite a shared understanding of vessel and These trends largely late in the Middle Phrygian period, there is a emphasis on local in YHSS and an in the ceramic assemblage in terms of vessel to the authors a more of identity formation, with a of and competition among elite the later Middle Phrygian period (YHSS and the Late Phrygian period (YHSS 4, BCE; presented in Gordion to have been into larger elsewhere and then The NAA a in the of local and an in the of nonlocal exchange, with for the and of Anatolian and Greek As is the case for the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (YHSS the available data and excavation contexts at Gordion are more limited for YHSS current work at the site is new light on this The authors therefore make of from other in the case of the for the period, and These to and ground the discussion in these in ways that are for the Early and Middle Phrygian which are far in it also be the case that the political of is simply a than the ritual of an incipient The of in Gordion’s ceramic record in the Early and Middle Phrygian periods to the authors an that is not see also 2018: the longue durée of the however, and without into cultural I if is a the patterns in YHSS truly compared to other contemporary if is it that the of the rather than a of social or political is responsible for It is that the authors do not more with current on political organization in and Anatolia 2020; on the Middle Phrygian period to and archaeological Phrygian interaction across central and the of central Anatolian groups into a but they only and Archaeological generally that work on the culture of the On the contemporary of in Anatolia, they and of of and They to Assyrian that Phrygians Assyrian but direct the to those key historical by and accessible online: see choice in these to with anthropological around social organization, and identity formation, at the of of interactions with known cultural groups, or historical or archaeological in Anatolia, in my the potential significance of the trends and this would these to be do the authors take the to on the potential as well as the limitations of studies of this which the of the This a the authors have a to the field in so much about the site and its history in a single the work of so many and and who are for an introduction to Gordion and its material culture in its Anatolian context not a the language and stratigraphic focus of much of the at the accessible is to be Ancient Gordion remains an important study that many interesting questions for of Iron Age Anatolia, who much to work with for years to come as they the of the material record presented