Mejoramientos de los curso beta

The strategic placement of burial monuments at key points along the routes between Gordion and other contemporary settlements, both in its local region and at farther distances, argues for a number of conclusions about the social connections between them. These routes were likely used frequently in the Iron Age and tied Gordion into a local communication/transportation network that included smaller communities that probably identified as Phrygian. The relationship between the urban center and the landscape was a close one and depended on constant movement of people and goods along established routes.

The consistency with which we find tumuli built at points of decision or at locations where one’s view changes dramatically, i.e. places of transition, fits the properties of landmarks outlined in Chapter Three. The intentions of the builders, whether or not the tumuli were meant to be used as landmarks, are less clear, but it is likely that visibility and movement played a role in their decisions. In either case, over time, as people continued to move through the landscape these monuments would have stood out in their memory, attached to the activities of burial, construction, routine movement, and perhaps ritualized movement and procession.

The elite of Gordion had a large role in marking and maintaining connections between settlements. The amount of labor that went into building tumuli was likely restricted to a select, but not too small, group of elites who may have derived some of their power from control of travel and communication throughout the landscape. The relationship between Gordion and the sites within its hinterland was likely very close. Even though the sites are not intervisible, the monuments built along routes phenomenologically connect the settlements to Gordion. The communities which

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lived at these sites were likely linked socially, especially among the elite, links that were probably established at Gordion. We should think of Gordion as a central place in terms of creating bonds (economic, social, and political) between groups living within a wide territory that expanded throughout the Iron Age. The hints that we have in terms of chronology suggest that this expansion likely occurred sometime in the early 8th _{century – as the tumuli along the routes were built – this date is in line} with other dynamic changes occurring on the Citadel Mound and throughout the landscape which suggest rapid growth and state formation during this time.

The tumuli played a critical role in creating and cementing this local network. They populated significant places in the landscape with which people interacted on a regular basis. The monuments, as landmarks, aided and encouraged traffic, and as burials involved ritual movement that helped increase the prestige of the elite while binding communities together through a set of shared practices.

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Chapter 5: Labor Mobilization for Monumental Construction

Introduction

Aside from being a helpful landmark on my first long hiking trip at Gordion, and thus planting the seed of this dissertation project, the Beyceğiz Tumulus remained a significant part of my summers at Gordion throughout my research. Numerous attempts at looting the tumulus have taken place over the years, several since I started working at Gordion, which drove me to consider the complicated, modern, economic, and political dynamics of the region and how they impact heritage preservation (see Chapter Six). After the first of these illicit excavations, reconnaissance of the tunnel dug into the side of the mound and subsequent

geophysical prospection seemed to indicate the presence, and even the location, of a tomb chamber encased in squared limestone blocks, much like some of the larger, excavated tumuli, including Tumulus MM. The dimensions of the Beyceğiz Tumulus, 110 m in diameter and 20 m tall, and pottery found in the looters’ backfill dating to the Middle Phrygian Period, all suggested that the tumulus would contain an intact burial with an exciting assemblage of grave goods from the most prosperous period of Gordion’s history.

The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara began rescue excavations which the Gordion Project joined in 2017 (under the direction of Richard Liebhart, assisted by Braden Cordivari). The excavations failed to uncover a tomb chamber or indeed any material indicative of any kind of mortuary deposition, even with the aid of earth- moving equipment and a mining machine used to punch through the bedrock underneath the massive mound. Instead the tumulus was found to have a

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loose masonry topped by alternating layers of differently colored fill. The lack of a chamber is extraordinary given the size, prominence, and distance of the monument from Gordion’s Citadel Mound, and therefore its presumed importance. No other excavated tumulus at Gordion has failed to reveal a burial of some kind.

The Beyceğiz Tumulus, more than any other at Gordion, emphasizes the idea that the existence of a tumulus and its presence in the landscape were important

elements in and of themselves, perhaps more important than its mortuary function. The route and visibility analysis of the previous chapter is an attempt to explain how this concept may have worked in practice.

The complicated internal structure of the Beyceğiz Tumulus also hints at the

importance of and research questions about the construction process (the subject of this chapter): how much labor does a tumulus represent? If we grant that elites were buried inside the tumuli, who built them and why? How much planning and

organization were involved? How was the workforce mobilized? Very little has been written about the relationship between the elites and the rest of the population at Gordion (DeVries 1980; Anderson 2012). Some indicators of social hierarchy are evident at Iron Age Gordion: monumental burial with prestige items, monumental public and defensive architecture, intensive agriculture, and long-distance trade. The nature of the hierarchy defies simple explanation, however, when one looks more closely at certain details: the architectural plan of the Citadel Mound is composed of

equal-sized ‘megaron’ units arranged around courtyards, and other large buildings

populate the Lower Town (Voigt 2007, 2011). Gordion lacks architecture that is identifiably representative of powerful institutions, such as a palace or a temple. Material culture associated with a complex administrative apparatus, which we would expect from a developed, hierarchical state, is also missing.

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How all of these factors combined into a cohesive social structure throughout the course of the Iron Age is beyond the scope of this project. The current chapter, rather, is an examination of how the tumuli, and specifically their construction process, may have structured relationships between the elite and the rest of the population at Gordion. I interpret the monuments as representative of practices that helped create social hierarchy, not merely reflect it.

To accomplish these goals, I begin by reviewing different types of labor mobilization found in ancient societies, with a focus on how scholars have treated the available evidence in various contexts and argued towards holistic views of ancient economies. In each case, I will consider whether the type of labor mobilization fits with the evidence from Gordion.

Most studies of ancient economic organization rely on textual sources to reconstruct specific practices. Scholars without recourse to such data have occasionally turned to the field of energetics to investigate issues of sociopolitical complexity through the lens of monument building and the scale of labor involved in large construction projects. Energetic calculations attempt to measure the total labor invested in a monument, usually represented in person-days. I will evaluate the comparative value of this methodology and comment on its limitations before engaging in my own calculations of the construction process of a typical tumulus at Gordion. This section will include an in-depth look at all of the evidence for the various activities,

materials, construction episodes, and changes throughout the Iron Age in the

creation of tumuli. Next I will generalize these energetic calculations to the landscape as a whole, including all of the excavated and unexcavated tumuli. Spatial and

chronological breakdowns will help to illustrate the distribution of labor over space and time in the landscape. I will also discuss two outliers - Tumulus MM and Tumulus

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W - the largest and earliest tumuli, respectively, and the implications of their labor values for the development of social hierarchy in Phrygian society.