KAZı SONUÇLARI - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

4. OBJECT CONSERVATlONObject conservation at Gordion in 2001 was again under the direction of Ms.Jessica Johnson, assisted by Ms. Caird Harbeck. A major undertaking of the seasonwas the re-housing of iron objects in the storage facilities of the Gordion Museum.5. RESEARCHDr. Garreth Darbyshire continued his study of the iron objects from Gordion, asdid Dr. Maya Vassileva her study of bronze materials. Pottery specialists were presentin good number: Dr. Gül Demir, Lydian and other West Anatolian pottery; Professor KeithDeVries, pre-Hellenistic Greek pottery; Dr. Robert Henrickson, pottery from excavationssince 1988. Professor Lynn Roller came to carry out a final check on the figuresand designs engraved in large number on the soft-stone blocks of the Early PhrygianMegaran 2.The year 2001 was an eventful one for the chranology of Gordion. At the beginningof the year, we learned that seeds collected by Mary Voigt from the antechamberof Terrace Building 2, a unit of the Early Phrygian Destruction Level, were consistentlydated by radiocarbon to roughly 830-800 B.C. The new date is at least a century earlierthan the date traditionally assigned to this important level (ca. 700 B.C.), althoughwe had already begun to suspect, on typological grounds alone, that the conventionaldating for the Destruction Level was too low. The implications and repercussions of thenew dating are many. The Destruction Level can no longer be associated with King Midasand the invading Kimmerians. The monumental buildings of the Early Phrygian citadel(Fig. 6) now give us examples of Iron Age Anatolian architecture not of the 8thcentury but of the 9th century B.C. The literally thousands of finds from the DestructionLevel give us a picture of Phrygian material culture not of the Iate 8th century, butof the Iate 9th century B.C. This last revelation especially is to have chronological ramificationsacross Anatolia and beyond.On another chronological front, Professor Peter Kuniholm, who also had the seedsdated, informed us that the logs of the outer casing of the so-called tomb of Midaswere cut in the year 740 +4/-7 B.C., on the basis of refined C-14 analysis. On the assumptionthat the logs were put in use in the tomb soon after they were cut, a date ofaraund 740 is much too early for the death of Midas, who is stili being mentioned inAssyrian records in 709. By remarkable coincidence, the new scientific date of 740 fallsmidway between the two dates given in two texts of Eusebios for Midas' ascension tothe throne of Phrygia, 742 and 738. Although the Eusebian dates need to be approachedwith much caution, inference from Assyrian records suggests that Midas was alreadyking in Phrygia as Iate as the early 720s or as early as the Iate 740s. Might thenthe tomb be that of the predecessor of Midas, who, as implied from the Classical Greektradition, would have been his father Gordias?142