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Among the most distinctive features of the now-familiar 1950 aerial photograph of Gordion are the nearly 100 tumuli that dot the landscape around the Citadel Mound (Figs. 12.1, 12.2). Better than many volumes of text, this photograph conveys the immense scale of the tumulus burials of wealthy families during the Early and Middle Phrygian period. Looking from the Citadel Mound toward the northeast today, one is overwhelmed by this extensive field of monumental burial mounds, and the view must have been even more striking in antiquity before the effects of erosion were visible (Young 1981: pl. 1A and B). Nearly all of the studies of these tumuli have focused on their burial assemblages and the identification of their occupants. We have neglected to ask several basic questions such as who actually constructed the tumuli, where the workers lived, and what their lives were like. This chapter attempts to clarify these issues by using the evidence of houses and tombs uncovered outside Gordion’s citadel during the Rodney Young excavations of the 1950s. I suggest that the residents of these houses are likely to have figured among the laborers who were engaged in Phrygian tomb construction , not unlike the situation in New Kingdom Egypt wherein the laborers’ houses were situated near the Pharaonic tombs that they built (Lesko 1994). Excavation and Research The even ground surrounding the tumuli reveals nothing today, but as early as the 3rd millennium BC, a Hittite cemetery was situated on the western end of the Northeast Ridge (Fig. 12.3) (Mellink 1956:1); later, in the early 1st millennium BC, a Phrygian cemetery and a domestic settlement were located here. This place had the clearest view of the Citadel Mound and the surrounding plain—a view that can be experienced today by every visitor to the Expedition House (Kohler 1995: pl. 3B). The Gordion Expedition under the direction of Rodney S. Young undertook the first season’s work in this area in 1950, and he began by digging the small Tumulus A. While the first day’s experience was still fresh in his mind, he described it in an April 1 letter to his colleague G. Roger Edwards: “Gold the first day, also…carved ivory, but in horrible shape. We opened a small tumulus…and only 60 cm below the present level we found a big cremation…apparently a young damsel.” There was gold, silver, electrum, ivory, beads, bronze, and a terracotta perfume container. “All very satisfactory,” concluded Young (Edwards 1980:159). This experience of digging the rich grave in Tumulus A marked an encouraging beginning, but it would remain an isolated experience that contrasted with what was to follow in those first seasons on the Northeast Ridge. In the next tumulus to be excavated , B, the burial chamber had been built into the cellar of a preexisting house—an early harbinger of the complicated stratigraphy that was to mark this area (Kohler 1995: fig. 4). Searching for the burial chamber in Tumulus H, also in 1950, the excavators came upon a Phrygian cemetery of simple inhumations in plain earth graves. This cemetery turned out to be the burial ground for commoners who did not have the wealth and status of the tumulus builders. The 12 In the Shadow of Tumulus MM: The Common Cemetery and Middle Phrygian Houses at Gordion Gunlög E. Anderson 172 THE arCHaEoLoGy of pHryGIan GordIon, royaL CITy of MIdas deeper levels of this Common Cemetery, on bedrock and in gravel, contained burials from a much older period, the Bronze Age. Machteld J. Mellink (1956) launched the investigation of the Bronze Age cemetery , which was continued by Ann Gunter (1991). The discovery of the graves of the Phrygian commoners was unexpected and did not appear to be very promising when the large tumuli were still the main focus of the expedition. It was simply not practical to include the cemetery in the excavation plans. All information available to us—about the Common Cemetery and the domestic houses—is therefore based on the discoveries in pre-tumulus levels and in the mantles of the tumuli on the Northeast Ridge. Mellink outlined the history of the “core area” of the cemetery during the Iron Age. After the end of the Bronze Age, she noted, the area “seems to have been left in peace for a considerable time, until Phrygian settlers selected the ridge for fairly intensive habitation ” (Mellink 1956:1–2). These were Phrygians of the 8th and early 7th...

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