Ceramic production and provenience at Gordion, Central Anatolia

Abstract

Phrygian Gordion was the political center of an influential Iron Age polity that extended across west central Anatolia during the first half of the 1st millennium BC. Though the borders of this polity remain vague a characteristic of the Phrygian 'footprint' is the distribution of highly distinctive ceramics. The extent to which Gordion potters were the originators of these wares remains uncertain. In this paper we use Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to establish the local signature of predominantly Iron Age ceramics for this site by combining samples from several decades of excavation with an extensive regional sediment sequence. We also compare previous NAA work at Gordion to suggest that the formative stages of the Phrygian state appears to have involved a more extensive network of non-local specialist producers than previously thought.