Iron Age | American Journal of Archaeology

Karaağaç Tumulus: An Iron Age Elite Burial from Rural Western Phrygia

website — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:12:32 +0000

This article presents the first comprehensive study of the Karaağaç Tumulus, a Middle Phrygian (ca. 800–540 BCE) monumental tomb located at the northwestern edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, modern Türkiye. Stratigraphic and material evidence indicate a multiphase use, including an Early Bronze Age cemetery, a Middle Iron Age tumulus with elite burial, and Late Antique graves. The architectural form and contents parallel those of Gordion and Ankara, suggesting a high-status interment, possibly linked to regional governance during Midas’ reign. Its remote location—far from known urban centers—challenges traditional models of centralized Phrygian authority and supports recent interpretations of a multipolar political structure of Iron Age Phrygia. The discovery of diverse goods, a Phrygian name inscribed on a jar, and the presence of bronze situlas further attest to elite cultural practices. Despite modern looting, salvage excavations have yielded valuable archaeological and archaeometric data, which places the tumulus between Gordion Tumuli MM and S-1 (740–690 BCE). It also emerges as a key site for understanding the diversity of Phrygian funerary traditions, political organization, and regional interaction in central Anatolia during the late eighth century BCE.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this article contains a photograph of human remains.

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Aššur’s Newcomers: Evidence for the Maintenance of Population in Imperial Assyrian Capitals Through Resettlement Events

website — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 20:27:15 +0000

Assyrian urban centers in northern Mesopotamia experienced massive growth during the Neo-Assyrian period (950–612 BCE) of the Iron Age. Aššur was the original seat of the Assyrian empire, acting as the center of Assyria’s religion and culture even after the capital was shifted elsewhere in the ninth century BCE. During the height of the empire in the eighth and seventh centuries, the occupied area of Aššur expanded to almost double that of the preceding centuries. Historically, it is known that deported populations from across the empire were resettled in the Assyrian heartland, with Aššur being one of the most common destinations. That many of the newcomers to Aššur were foreign-born is indicated in the evidence from archival records of several houses in the Outer Town. Furthermore, nonlocal mortuary practices are present in these newly occupied areas more so than anywhere else in the city. I propose that the significant increase in urban density at Aššur—and the subsequent expansion and restructuring of its urban area—resulted from the purposeful resettlement strategies of the Assyrian kings in the first millennium BCE. Such sudden, enforced population increases radically changed the urban fabric of all central Assyrian urban centers, not just Aššur.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this article contains a photograph of human remains.

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The Citadel of Gordion and the Dating of the Midas Monument at Midas City

website — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:46:53 +0000

The rock-cut Midas Monument at Midas City, about 150 km west of Gordion, appears to reproduce the kind of megarons that were in operation in Iron Age Phrygia. In a 2023 article in the AJA, Geoffrey Summers argued that the Midas Monument was carved in the early sixth century BCE, when the surrounding area was under Lydian control. In this note, we address his arguments in detail and maintain that the available evidence supports a late eighth-century BCE date for the carving of the Midas Monument, when Midas served as king of Phrygia.

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Fieldwork at Phrygian Gordion, 2016–2023

website — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:46:53 +0000

This article presents the results of the last eight seasons of work at Gordion in west central Türkiye, focusing primarily on architectural conservation, excavation, and remote sensing on the Citadel Mound. The recently discovered South Gate appears to have been in use for over 1,200 years, from the ninth century BCE to the fourth century CE, and with an approach road nearly 100 m long. New excavations in the Mosaic Building Complex, first unearthed in the 1950s and dated at that time to the late fifth century BCE (Persian period), have demonstrated that it was actually constructed a century and a half earlier (ca. 575 BCE) and reconstructed after Gordion came under Persian control. The discoveries within the complex include a stone omphalos and two gilded ivory sphinxes that probably adorned a throne. The Mosaic Building may also have housed the cart with the Gordian Knot cut by Alexander in 333 BCE. The eighth-century Tumulus 52 included more than 3,000 amber beads imported from the Baltic, and the decedent may have been a member of Midas’ family. Gordion was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site List in 2023, the 20th site in Türkiye to be so honored.

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Beyceğiz Tumulus: A Middle Phrygian Cenotaph near Gordion

website — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 19:54:35 +0000

The Beyceğiz Tumulus, 11.5 km east of the Phrygian capital of Gordion, was the target of multiple looting attempts, prompting a salvage excavation from 2013 to 2017 by the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara in partnership with the Gordion Archaeological Project. Remote sensing indicated a chamber-shaped anomaly near the tumulus center, which became the focus of excavation. The anomaly turned out to be a stone platform built on bedrock, which proved to be the center of radiating guide walls that separated sediment fills used for the original construction of the tumulus. No trace of any kind of burial or ritual deposit was found. The most reasonable explanation is that the tumulus was a cenotaph. The ceramics found inside it provide a terminus post quem for its construction in the late eighth century BCE. The construction technique of the tumulus demonstrates the importance of design, planning, logistics, organization, and cooperation. Its prominence in the landscape around Gordion suggests that it was both a memorial and a visual marker on a major road leading from Gordion to the Phrygian citadel of Hacıtuğrul.

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The Early Iron Age Cemetery of Ḥorvat Tevet: Life and Death in a Rural Community in the Jezreel Valley

website — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Recent salvage excavations at Ḥorvat Tevet in northern Israel revealed a cemetery consisting of at least 25 burials dated to the Iron I period (11th–10th centuries BCE). In this article, the burial practices employed in this cemetery are analyzed in order to shed light on the social complexity, economy, and funerary rituals of a rural community in the Jezreel Valley in the period between the collapse of Egyptian rule in Canaan and the formation of early monarchic Israel. Based on the finds in the graves and variations between graves, it is concluded that the site was home to a community characterized by minimal wealth accumulation, limited social division, and few long-distance trade contacts, though there are implications that the site had connections with the Beth-Shean Valley. This evidence is then contextualized in light of mortuary data from the Late Bronze II–Iron IIA Jezreel Valley in order to define aspects of continuity and change during the transition from Canaanite city-states to territorial polities.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this article contains photographs of human remains.

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Kızıldağ, Karadağ, and Sacred Peak Sites in Central Anatolia During the Late Bronze and Iron Ages

website — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Mountain peaks and rocky outcrops have long been recognized to have been crucial components of the religious beliefs of people in Anatolia during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Archaeologically, however, sanctuaries that are associated with these features are much less understood. This article considers what is known about Anatolian peak sites textually and archaeologically for the second and first millennia BCE. While Late Bronze Age textual accounts of rituals and built features on peaks are abundant, archaeological data is comparatively scarce. The converse is true during the Iron Age, from which there are several archaeologically attested kinds of monuments associated with rocky outcrops and peaks, including stelae and step monuments, but a limited textual record. Assessing the evidence for continuity and innovation in peak-site usage across the two periods sheds new light on the Bronze to Iron Age transition, contributing additional nuance to what is increasingly recognized to have been a highly variable and localized phenomenon. In particular, the Iron Age peak sanctuaries of Kızıldağ and Karadağ and the associated settlement of Türkmen-Karahöyük serve as a useful case study for the ways in which Late Bronze Age precedents were consciously adapted into new forms in the Iron Age.

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Bone Objects as Offerings of Animal Bodies in Archaic Greek Sanctuaries

website — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 04:00:00 +0000

During the late eighth and the seventh centuries BCE, objects worked from animal materials became a common form of offering at sanctuaries across the Greek world. Contemporary dedication practices of modified bone shafts at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta and at two sanctuaries on Rhodes (Athena Kameiras and Athena Lindia) indicate that during this period there was an emphasis on creating and offering conspicuously organic objects made from the remains of animals. This article argues that perceptions of corporeality in the early Greek world permitted an understanding of the human body as a collection of separate parts. Examining the dedication of the modified bone shafts along with other ritualized acts (e.g., sacrifice and meat consumption) reveals that animal bodies could also be divided into distinct parts with separate functions. By repeatedly disassembling and transforming animal bodies, individuals in the Greek world offered bone objects that functioned as extensions of once-living animals, structuring and maintaining the relationships among humans, animals, and the divine.

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Daya Cave: A Place of Worship of Mesopotamian and Persian Gods in the West Central Zagros Mountains, Iran

website — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 04:00:00 +0000

In the winter of 2021, a previously unknown and almost inaccessible cave called Aškawt-i Daya was discovered in the heart of Bakhakuh Mountain in the west central Zagros Mountains of Iran. An exceptional feature of the cave is its collection of paintings on the walls and ceiling with animal and human motifs, rendered in black pigment, both singly and in groups involved in scenes of hunting and slaughter. As with other rock paintings in Iran, establishing a date for these paintings is difficult, but there are hints both from the presence of certain motifs and from accompanying inscriptions that the paintings were probably created from the Achaemenid (550–330 BCE) to the Parthian period (247 BCE–224 CE). A depiction of a bull-man, as well as the appearance in the inscriptions of the names of divinities such as Nergal, Marduk, Sin, and Šamaš, suggest that the original gods to be worshiped in the cave were Mesopotamian. The use of the cave as a place of worship continued into the Seleucid (312–63 BCE) and then the Parthian and early Sassanian periods, by which time the cave had been transformed into the setting for a cult of Mithra.

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Notes on Phrygian Architecture: A Sixth-Century BCE Date for the Midas Monument at Midas City

website — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 04:00:00 +0000

This article considers evidence for the form and materials used in monumental Phrygian architecture in Central Anatolia during the Middle Iron Age (eighth–sixth centuries BCE) to argue for a later (sixth-century BCE) date for the Midas Monument. Examination of this monument and other rock-cut architectural facades in the Phrygian Highlands leads to the conclusion that all of the monumental facades in the Phrygian Highlands represent buildings with low, double-pitched, tiled roofs and architectural terracotta revetment tiles that should be dated to the first half of the sixth century. This conclusion has significant implications for the history of Midas City itself and the nature of Lydian rule in Central Anatolia.

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