Excavation | 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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Mortality Crisis at Akhetaten? Amarna and the Bioarchaeology of the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean Epidemic

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

The question of whether the ancient Egyptian city of Akhetaten (14th century BCE; modern Amarna) was affected by an epidemic has long been debated. Evidence such as the deaths of several Amarna-period royals within a short period and the identification of Egyptian soldiers as the source of the plague that affected the Hittite empire in Muršili II’s plague prayers has been cited to support the idea. More recently, the presence of burials containing multiple individuals in the Amarna cemeteries, high disease frequencies, and some unusual demographic characteristics have been used to support claims of an epidemic. This paper surveys the debate and then discusses archaeological and demographic hallmarks of epidemics identified by others at cities with historically documented disease outbreaks. Through this lens of expectation, we integrate archaeological and bioarchaeological data from ongoing work at Amarna’s cemeteries with pertinent data from long-running settlement excavations at the site to assess whether there is empirical evidence of epidemic disease at Amarna and the wider implications of this. We conclude that when the evidence is considered as a whole, there is little to currently suggest Akhetaten was affected by a mortal epidemic.

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

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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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Late Fifth-Century CE Wall Mosaics from the Tetrapylon Street in Aphrodisias: Evidence for a Wall Mosaic Habit in Late Antiquity

website — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 16:10:50 +0000

This article presents evidence for late fifth-century CE wall mosaics from Aphrodisias, provincial capital of Caria, in western Asia Minor. The mosaics formed part of the decoration of an upper-story gallery belonging to one or more luxurious private residences located alongside the Tetrapylon Street, the city’s main north–south avenue. They are therefore a rare example of Late Antique wall mosaics from a domestic context. We present the context in which the mosaic fragments were found, the motifs that can still be recognized, and some of the technical characteristics of these mosaics. Combined with other elements of decoration found in association with the mosaic fragments, we offer a reconstruction of the decorative program of the gallery. We then broaden our view to trace wall mosaics elsewhere at Aphrodisias and discuss waste attesting to glass tessera production. We argue that an itinerant wall mosaic workshop or workshops were active at Aphrodisias in the late fifth and early sixth century CE, when the city’s monuments and residences were undergoing renovations in the wake of an earthquake. We examine the possibility of a wall mosaic habit that was much more widespread than previously thought, extending beyond the ecclesiastical contexts with which it is conventionally associated.

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The First Koinon Temple of Roman Sardis: A Sanctuary from the First Century Through Late Antiquity

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

An artificial terrace in the center of the city of Sardis in western Asia Minor formed a focus of urban life from the Early Imperial period until the early Byzantine era. Following the earthquake of 17 CE, the terrace became a major sanctuary of the imperial cult belonging to the koinon of Asia. The lavishly ornamented octastyle temple and broad range of honorific monuments attest the importance of the sanctuary for the first three centuries CE. In the fourth century, the temple was largely demolished, and the sanctuary plaza converted to elite housing. This region was later enclosed by an impressive fortification wall built almost entirely out of spolia from the temple and sanctuary. The houses were destroyed by one or more earthquakes in the early seventh century, and while most of the area was apparently abandoned, traces of occupation cast light on this little-known period of Sardis’ history.

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The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World’s Oldest House Church

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

In his final report of the excavations at Dura-Europos, Syria, the scholar Carl Kraeling established the site’s Christian Building as the ancient world’s preeminent example of a domus ecclesiae, a house converted into a church through architectural adaptation. In Kraeling’s interpretation, a private domestic structure (House M8A) built in 232 CE was later remade as a community-owned church through a single, deliberate program of modification. This article engages with legacy ideas about the Christian Building, unexplored archival records, and recent studies of Dura-Europos to rethink the building’s phases, functions, and dating. I argue that House M8A was not the domus ecclesiae that Kraeling envisioned—wholly, instantly, and permanently converted to a church—but a Christian house that retained a domestic aspect even as it was adapted for religious activity. The article proposes new phases for the building and advances an earlier chronology for its construction in the late second or early third century CE, a time that better fits revised estimates of Dura’s Roman development. This reinterpretation of the world’s oldest domestic church building bears significant repercussions for our understanding of early Christian architecture and communities and underscores the value of critical thinking and revisiting legacy ideas in archaeology.

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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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Refuse and the Roman City: Determining the Formation Processes of Refuse Assemblages Using Statistical Measures of Heterogeneity

website — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 04:00:00 +0000

The movement of refuse through an ancient city remains poorly understood despite an increasing body of excavated and published evidence. Urban refuse deposits are commonly attributed to simple discard behaviors: residents casually threw away their refuse, unintentionally forming much of today’s archaeological record. This study reevaluates the formation processes of such deposits with quantitative data. Using an Ostian dumpsite and refuse deposits within Pompeian domestic spaces as case studies, I calculate the values of heterogeneity (richness and evenness) of the artifact assemblages. These values complement the qualitative methods archaeologists use to describe the heterogeneity of artifact assemblages. Crucially, the values are readily comparable and reveal patterns not previously recognized. These patterns indicate that none of the examined Pompeian refuse deposits derived from casual disposal. Instead, the data show that the refuse comprising them was reclaimed from the peri-urban dump and transported to where fill materials were needed during construction projects. Such behaviors reveal an intricate relationship between the residents and their refuse, where systematic reuse applications often followed disposal. The data derived from this study compel us to rethink how refuse deposits were formed, from where the refuse originated, and for what purpose it was deposited.

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A Falcon Shrine at the Port of Berenike (Red Sea Coast, Egypt)

website — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 04:00:00 +0000

During excavations at the Hellenistic-Roman port of Berenike (on the Red Sea coast of Egypt) in the winter of 2019, work in the so-called Northern Complex documented a religious space from the Late Roman period. The excavation of a portion of this space recorded material that, together with the architecture, suggests a ritual function associated with a falcon cult. This study examines the features of this edifice and the interpretation of the religious materials found in it and proposes a possible relationship with the Blemmyan population who lived in Berenike between the fourth and sixth centuries CE.

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Negotiating Infant Personhood in Death: Interpreting Atypical Burials in the Late Roman Infant and Child Cemetery at Poggio Gramignano (Italy)

website — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 04:00:00 +0000

The Late Antique (ca. 450 CE) infant cemetery uncovered at Poggio Gramignano near Lugnano in Teverina (Italy) has been interpreted as a catastrophic death assemblage associated with an acute epidemic of Plasmodium falciparum malaria and a resulting episode of increased infant mortality. Previous research has noted the unique mortuary ritual associated with these burials but has not adequately considered the social implications of the nonnormative burial of the infant and even fetal dead. This paper considers 10 newly uncovered burials of infants and one child from the cemetery, analyzed in situ using an archaeothanatological approach to separate postdepositional taphonomic change from the social and ritual dimensions of intentional funerary behavior. The mortuary treatment provided to these individuals suggests a possible fear of the dead, and more significantly, maternal grief and a desire for remembrance that contrasts with Roman cultural expectations surrounding the mourning of infants. The treatment of these individuals in death provides valuable and specific insight into the attitudes of this rural community’s shared stress surrounding unexplained illness, infant death, and traditional beliefs in an era of significant cultural and social transition.

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