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In 25 BC the Roman Emperor Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) annexed a large swath of central Turkey to create the Roman province of Galatia. To facilitate the administration of this new territory, three cities were founded at the largest Galatian tribal centers, Ancyra, Tavium, and Pessinus (modern Ankara, Büyüknefes, and Ballıhisar, respectively). Although Gordion had a legendary reputation by Roman times, it was not chosen to become a major center, having long since declined from its position of regional dominance. Indeed, the geographer Strabo (ca. 64 BC–ca. AD 21) describes the former Phrygian capital as having been reduced in his day to a mere village, if slightly larger than those around it (Strabo 12.5.3). Gordion had become one of many small communities along the Ancyra-Pessinus highway amid the Galatian highlands. It is small wonder, then, that Roman Gordion has until recently failed to receive significant attention. Strabo’s widely accepted description of the Romanperiod settlement provided little incentive to pursue further investigation. After a brief exploratory sampling of the Roman-period strata by R. S. Young in 1950, excavations were quickly re-directed to areas of the Citadel Mound beyond the Roman town’s periphery, where pre-Roman levels were more readily accessible (Young 1951). The impressive pre-Roman remains have garnered the lion’s share of resources and research at Gordion, and the late habitation levels were treated with the casual disregard common to other major Anatolian Bronze or Iron Age centers, such as Boğazköy, Kültepe, and Acemhöyük. For nearly 50 years the modest discoveries of Gordion’s Roman-period inhabitants thus remained unanalyzed and unpublished, quietly tucked away in storage depots. ROMAN GORDION: HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE Since 1993 we have witnessed a resurgence of interest in Roman Gordion, as scholars have become increasingly aware of its potential to shed light upon provincial dynamics in Roman Galatia. The primary impetus for this change was the publication of Mitchell’s Anatolia (1993), a landmark study that heightened interest in the economic, political, and cultural development of central Anatolia during the Roman Imperial period. Mitchell’s work opened a new dialogue about complex socioeconomic phenomena such as urban growth and consolidation, the expansion of the regional economy, and patterns of rural settlement and land 5 RECONSTRUCTING THE ROMAN-PERIOD TOWN AT GORDION ANDREW GOLDMAN 57 ownership. Such issues have rarely been addressed for Rome’s Anatolian provinces, and Mitchell’s detailed models, formulated largely on the basis of the surviving literary and epigraphic sources, have sparked much discussion and debate about Roman Galatia. The chief criticism that can be leveled at Mitchell’s work is the virtual absence of archaeological data in support of his theses. The fault rests not with Mitchell but with the dearth of excavations at Roman-period sites in the Galatian hinterlands. Although the former urban centers of Roman Galatia have received some attention, Galatian town and village sites have lain virtually untouched. Over the past several decades steady increases in population and agricultural activity in central Turkey have affected such sites adversely. The rapid disappearance of these smaller sites is diminishing our opportunity to recover evidence of their organization and development. Such circumstances are doubly disturbing since sites elsewhere across Turkey are also disappearing, reducing potential comparanda in a country where scant evidence exists for the physical organization or material culture of such communities. The lack of archaeological data in the rural districts of Galatia and adjacent provinces has hindered our study of Roman-period settlement, and we must view current models for Galatia’s development and organization with caution in light of the limited body of material evidence upon which they are based. Excavated Roman-period material at Gordion can address this lacuna, and analyzing it gives us the first opportunity to detail the social and economic dynamics of Galatia’s rural landscape. The town is exceptional as the only excavated settlement of its date, size, and rural status in central Turkey, as well as one of the few excavated Roman-period towns in Anatolia. Gordion was located on a major east-west highway linking Ankara and the Black Sea region to the northeast with Pessinus, Colonia Germa (modern Babadat), and the Aegean provinces to the southwest. The presence of this road—still partially visible to the east of Gordion—facilitates the study of trade patterns on both local and interregional levels. In addition, Gordion’s location near the nexus...

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