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Category:Turkey


Walls, Walls Everywhere, and None of Them in a Line – Kurtis Tanaka

By: Anne Tiballi

Returning to a project after a few seasons absence can be at once rewarding and disorienting; rewarding to see the progress and preliminary results made in the meantime, disorienting to pick up where you remember leaving things when last you were there. Certainly this was my experience at the Gordion Project this summer, to which […]


Writing the History of Gordion – Katherine Ku

By: Anne Tiballi

This past summer, I had the opportunity to travel to Yassihöyük, Turkey, to work as the registrar for the Gordion Archaeological Project. It was an incredible experience to become part of the story of such an important excavation – almost like becoming part of the history of the very place I was studying. Beyond this, […]


Visiting Sites around Lake Van, Turkey – Rachel Cohen

By: Anne Tiballi

I just got back from two weeks in the Lake Van region of eastern Turkey, where I was doing pre-dissertation research on sites from the Urartian Empire (860 – 590 BCE). Specifically, my research takes a phenomenological approach, focusing on bodily experiences of archaeological sites: sights, sounds, textures, sensations of movement, and the emotional impact […]


Digging Deeper at Gordion

By: Tom Stanley

When it comes to the Citadel Mound at Gordion—the primary focus of the Gordion Archaeological Project’s work this year—one thing is quite clear, even to a newcomer such as myself: this is a very large site. As I mentioned before, it measures 450 x 300 meters, which equals roughly the size of 19 American football […]


Ankara and Gordion: First Days on the Ground

By: Tom Stanley

I boarded a plane at the Philadelphia International Airport last Tuesday at around 10:30 am. Two layovers and 20 sleepless hours later, I landed at Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, at roughly 1:30 pm local time. I found my checked bag, exchanged some US currency for Turkish Lira, and got myself a yellow cab at […]


Goat to Sweater

By: Naomi Miller

co-written by: Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann In thinking of ways to preserve the historic landscape around Gordion , Turkey, Ayşe and I thought the best approach was one that would give economic value to the land. Historically, mixed farming (sheep and goat herding and dry-farmed grain cultivation) were the basis of the economy. Now, however, creeping suburbanization […]


Going to Gordion

Gordion site photo

By: Tom Stanley

Hi friends. Tom Stanley here, your favorite Penn Museum social media manager, reporting for summer excavation duty. Last year, I was quite fortunate to be sent on my first expedition to a beautiful corner of the US known as Wilkinson County, Mississippi, where my job was to document a portion of the first season of […]


Teens and Tea: Cultural Heritage Education at Gordion, Turkey

By: Naomi Miller

by Janelle Sadarananda, Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann, and Naomi F. Miller This is the last post in a series reporting on the Gordion Cultural Heritage Education Project, led by Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann, Assistant Director of the Gordion Project. Halil Demirdelen, Deputy Director of the Ankara museum, provided invaluable educational support. Naomi F. Miller, consulting scholar at the Penn Museum, and […]


In One End, Out the Other: Evidence for Camel at Gordion, Turkey

By: Naomi Miller

Naomi F. Miller, Consulting Scholar, Near East Section and Janine van Noorden, Leiden University and Groningen Institute of Archaeology The Penn Museum’s Gordion project has been going on for more than half a century. Is there anything else to learn? Sometimes, new, high-tech approaches give a fresh perspective: for example, last year and ongoing, Lucas Stevens (AAMW […]


Teens and Treks: Cultural Heritage Education at Gordion, Turkey

By: Naomi Miller

By Elspeth Dusinberre, Department of Classics, University of Colorado, Boulder This post is part of a series reporting on the Gordion Cultural Heritage Education Project (CHEP), conceptualized and led by Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann, Deputy Director of the Gordion Project. Halil Demirdelen, Deputy Director of the Ankara museum, provided invaluable educational support. Naomi F. Miller, consulting scholar at […]