Expedition Volume 53, Number 1 Spring 2011

Expedition

®

THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

SPRING 2011 VOLUME 53, NUMBER 1

MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY WWW.PENN.MUSEUM/EXPEDITION

AFGHAN WAR RUGS A CONSERVATION PROGRAM AT GORDION IN SEARCH OF SAN PIETRO D’ASSO ARCHAEOLOGY AND SHIPWRECKS

contents spring 2011

VOLUME 53, NUMBER 1

features

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AFGHAN WARS, ORIENTAL CARPETS, AND GLOBALIZATION

By Brian Spooner

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RESURRECTING GORDION: PRESERVING TURKEY’S PHRYGIAN CAPITAL

By Frank G. Matero and C. Brian Rose

30 By Stefano Campana, Michelle Hobart, Richard Hodges, IN SEARCH OF SAN PIETRO D’ASSO

Adrianna de Svastich, and Jennifer McAuley

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ARCHaeometry AND SHIPWRECKS: A REVIEW ARTICLE

From Mine to Microscope: Advances in the Study of Ancient Technology

By James D. Muhly

departments

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2 From the Editor 3 From the Director 4 From the Archives—Jim Thompson, the Thai Silk King in the World—Telmu and Petrui: 7 What A Rediscovered Romance? the Field—Guerilla Fashion: Textiles in Motion 9 From Push Change in Indian Art

45 Museum Mosaic—People, Places, Projects

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on the cover: Detail from Afghan war rug shown on page 13.

Amanullah Khan, depicted here, helped lead Afghanistan to independence in 1919. Photo by Textile Museum of Canada.

We welcome letters to the Editor.

Expedition® (ISSN 0014-4738) is published three times a year by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Please send them to: Anthropology, 3260 South St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-6324. ©2011 University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Expedition is a Expedition registered trademark of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. All editorial inquiries should be addressed to the Editor at the above Penn Museum address or by email to jhickman@upenn.edu. Subscription price: $35.00 per subscription per year. International subscribers: add 3260 South Street $15.00 per subscription per year. Subscription, back issue, and advertising queries to Maureen Goldsmith at publications@museum.

Philadelphia, n . e d u / ePA x p19104-6324 edition 1 upenn.edu or (215)898-4050. Subscription forms may be faxed to (215)573-9369. Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. w w w . m u s e u m . u p e n Email: jhickman@upenn.edu

welcome

From the Editor

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the williams director

Richard Hodges, Ph.D. williams directors emeritus

Robert H. Dyson, Jr., Ph.D. Jeremy A. Sabloff, Ph.D. deputy director

C. Brian Rose, Ph.D. chief operating officer

Melissa P. Smith, CFA chief of staff to the williams director

James R. Mathieu, Ph.D. director of development

Amanda Mitchell-Boyask mellon associate deputy director

Loa P. Traxler, Ph.D. merle-smith director of community engagement

Jean Byrne director of exhibitions

Kathleen Quinn director of marketing and communications

Suzette Sherman associate director for administration

Alan Waldt expedition staff editor

Jane Hickman, Ph.D. associate editor

Jennifer Quick assistant editor

Emily B. Toner subscriptions manager

Maureen Goldsmith editorial advisory board

Fran Barg, Ph.D. Clark L. Erickson, Ph.D. James R. Mathieu, Ph.D. Naomi F. Miller, Ph.D. Janet M. Monge, Ph.D. Theodore G. Schurr, Ph.D. Robert L. Schuyler, Ph.D.

ver the last several decades, Afghanistan has suffered from invasion, revolution, and civil war. Although we frequently read about the suffering experienced by the Afghan people, we rarely see firsthand the lasting impact of continuous conflict. Our first feature article focuses on one aspect of Afghan culture that reflects its recent history: war rugs. These rugs will be featured in Battleground: War Rugs from Afghanistan, a new exhibition which opens at the Penn Museum on April 30, 2011. The 63 rugs in the exhibition do not depict the traditional designs of oriental carpets; instead they include images of war— tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, land mines, and guns.

The next two articles describe aspects of current archaeological projects associated with the Penn Museum. Frank G. Matero and C. Brian Rose write on efforts undertaken by Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and the University of Pennsylvania to develop and implement a preservation plan for Gordion. This is followed by a two-part article on recent work in San Pietro d’Asso, Italy; the first section chronicles the results of the 2010 excavation season, followed by a description of what it was like, from the perspective of Penn undergraduates, to spend a month working and living in Tuscany. Our fourth feature is a review article by Penn Professor Emeritus and former Editor of Expedition, James D. Muhly. Jim reviews a recent festschrift published in honor of Michael Tite and discusses current scholarship on copper oxhide ingots and bronze artifacts discovered on shipwrecks off the coast of Turkey.

Several short articles are also included in this issue. In “From the Archives,” Alessandro Pezzati describes the lives of two people associated with the Penn Museum in the mid-20th century: Jim Thompson, the “Thai Silk King,” and his friend and colleague, Elizabeth Lyons. Jean Turfa tells the unusual story behind two clay urns in the Etruscan collection. And Lucy Fowler Williams describes the intersection between Native American culture and contemporary fashion.

The Museum has had a busy winter, as evidenced by the expanded “Museum Mosaic” section.

We are planning several special themed issues for the next two years: a Summer 2011 issue on excavations in Italy, and 2012 issues that celebrate the Museum’s 125th anniversary and a new exhibition on the Maya. As always, we welcome your feedback on Expedition.

design Anne Marie Kane Imogen Design www.imogendesign.com

FPO

printing C&B Graphics www.cnbgraphics.com

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jane hickman, ph.d.

Editor

from the director

Penn Museum and Afghanistan

Penn Museum

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enn museum has long had a part in revealing Afghan hodges archaeological history. In 1953, at Director Froelich Rainey’s instigation, Rodney Young, Curator of the Mediterranean Section and Director of the Gordion excavations, conducted excavations at the ancient city of Bactra, modern-day Balkh. Young was drawn to the site because the great city on the Oxus had featured in Alexander the Great’s eastern adventures, before becoming the capital city of the Euthydemids in Hellenistic times, and then, according to the Romans, a fabulously rich place in the centuries after Christ.

Young’s excavations enabled him to phase the topographic outlines of the city, which he concluded were “three times as big as Gordion…and ten times as big as the mound of Troy, a city…not entirely without reputation” (American Journal of Archaeology 59 [1955]:267-276). Balkh-Bactra is but one small glimpse of the extraordinary archaeology of Afghanistan, a country that was for millennia an interface between East and West.

The Afghan war rugs from the Textile Museum of Canada, featured in the Penn Museum’s new exhibition Battleground: War Rugs from Afghanistan (April 30–July 31, 2011), affirm the axiomatic place of this troubled country as a bridge between East and West, but from the standpoint of our era.

These extraordinary rugs tell an indigenous story through their vivid and harrowing iconography of invasions over the past 30 years. What was once an uncomfortable story for British colonial forces in the earlier 20th century has become in modern times uncomfortable for first the Soviet Union, then, since 2001, for the coalition of NATO countries now entangled in a complicated struggle. These exquisite objects invite us to reflect, of course, on this struggle, but our greater hope is that this exhibition, like Rodney Young’s excavations, will encourage our audiences to consider the extraordinary by richard

Froelich Rainey (on camelback) in Afghanistan, 1952.

UPM Image # 48652

history and culture of this country. Iconographically—as I believe all visitors to this exhibition will agree—these war rugs are masterpieces by peoples who have for the most part been “without history” (i.e. unable to comment themselves in written texts) but continue to play an important role in on-going East-West relations.

richard hodges, ph.d.

The Williams Director

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from the archives

Buddhist priests blessed Jim Thompson’s Thai house in Bangkok, 1959.

UPM Image # 194079.

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ounger generations may not know Jim Thompson pezzati (1906–1967?), but in the 1950s and 1960s he was famous throughout the world as Thailand’s “Silk King,” and as an arbiter of international taste. Born of a wealthy Delaware family, Thompson graduated from Princeton and attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture. Though he never completed his degree, he became an architect nonetheless, designing houses as well as landscapes and interiors. By his mid-thirties, however, he had grown dissatisfied with his life as a carefree bachelor and had begun to alienate his family with his increasingly liberal political views. World War II prompted him to quit his job and enlist. He traveled to North Africa, Italy, and France before being sent to Thailand. by alessandro

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Thailand was never colonized, and, though ostensibly an ally of Japan during the war, it did not participate in the fighting and suffered little damage. Upon his arrival, Thompson was immediately enchanted by the country’s unique character and by the city of Bangkok, with its people and their art. He also saw business opportunities. His passion was taken by Thai silk, a local tradition he helped revive, creating a demand all over the world. He formed the Thai Silk Company in 1951 and, with a keen sense of color and indefatigable salesmanship, became extremely successful. His creations became famous—worn by celebrities and socialites—and were even used in the 1956 film The King and I. In addition to silk, Thompson’s passions included collecting antiquities from temples and caves around the country, and the house he built to display them and entertain his constant stream of guests. That house is now a museum.

Penn Museum

Jim Thompson, the Thai Silk King

Excerpts from “Cockatoo” by Elizabeth Lyons (1980s)

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im thompson and elizabeth (lisa) lyons were friends and colleagues in Thailand. Lisa Lyons’ manuscript collection, available in the Museum Archives, includes a number of her writings, such as an unpublished murder mystery called The Bangkok Case, and a set of reminiscences of her time in Thailand. The following are excerpts from “Cockatoo,” about Jim Thompson’s inseparable companion.

Fascinated by the tameness of such a large bird, but a little frightened by those strong claws and especially of that Turkish scimitar beak, I gingerly held out my arm. Jim lifted him with both hands and set him on my wrist; he…climbed up to my shoulder and slowly ran his beak over my ear and cheek, pressing his head to mine. I wasn’t sure I liked it. Not that the feathered caress was unpleasant, but I thought it an unnatural way for a bird to act. As far as I knew there were only two kinds of birds, wild ones singing in the trees, and canaries in cages, and both would flee or go into hysterics if you came close to them. But this bunch of feathers on my shoulder was actually nuzzling me like a puppy.

Cockatoo talked a great deal, sometimes clearly verbal phrases in an unknown tongue, but mostly a chuckling, twittering stream of sound that was such a parody of the hundreds of dinner conversations we had known…

Suddenly the bird hopped from the chair onto the table, ran a few steps and flapped to the window. Horrified that he was going to take off into the night and be lost, we scrambled after him, but in the time it took us to get out of our chairs he had turned around, lifted his tail and defecated into the garden.

Cocky became a great social prize as a guest and was invited all over town. He and Jim looked like a couple out of a Cocteau film as they came into a room, the man in a black dinner jacket, the white bird on his shoulder, blue eyes and little round black ones on the same level, both heads turning to the welcoming hosts. By and large, Cocky’s party manners were perfect although it was well to see that he was close to an open window since he did hate to leave good company even for a moment; and you had to watch that he didn’t steal nips of liquor after dinner…And I must admit that he had a low taste for practical jokes. Let there be someone in the room with a phobia about birds and he would sense it. He would ruin the poor woman’s evening simply by keeping his eyes fixed on her and giving a menacing, maniacal chuckle every time she looked his way. Or, when everyone’s attention was diverted he would sneak along the back of chairs and then quietly wait by the victim’s shoulder until she turned around…and shrieked.

Penn Museum

Jim Thompson with his frequent companion, Cockatoo.

UPM Image # 194077.

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In 1967, Thompson disappeared suddenly while visiting friends in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, a mountainous region covered by intractable jungle. Search parties set out to look for him—including 325 Malaysian police, British soldiers on leave, 30 aboriginal trackers, and a number of psychics, including Peter Hurkos, who had helped with the Boston Strangler case. Thompson was never found.

Many explanations were given for his disappearance, including theories that he was kidnapped by Communists, killed during a CIA mission, or eaten by a tiger. No one could explain, though, why he left the cottage without taking his cigarettes or his pills for gallstone pain. The mystery was compounded after his sister was murdered in her house in Delaware six months later by an unknown assailant.

The discovery of the site of Ban Elizabeth (Lisa) Lyons appeared on Japanese television to discuss Asian art, 1956. UPM Image # 194047.

Chiang brought Lyons to the Penn Museum as Assistant Curator of the Asian Section in 1968, a year after Thompson’s disappearIn 1955, Thompson met Elizabeth Lyons, an art historian ance. She then spent five years (1971–1975) administering the from Michigan who had studied at Columbia University, Ford Foundation program in Southeast Asian art and archaewith stints in Paris and Brussels. At the time of their meetology. She later returned to the Penn Museum as Keeper ing, Lyons had been appointed cultural attaché at the U.S. of the Asian Section Collections in 1976. She co-curated State Department, touring an exhibition of modern American the Buddhism exhibition as it appears today and eventually Art around South and Southeast Asia and acting as a cultural donated her own collection, which included some pieces ambassador in the region. When she originally applied for the given to her by Thompson, to the Museum. Her papers, job, she had not been considered a serious candidate, since the including her unfinished monograph on Thai painting, a State Department wanted a man. But as no men applied, it was stash of letters from Thompson, and a number of reminisshe who was selected. cences from her Thailand days, are now available in the Penn Lisa Lyons and Jim Thompson became fast friends, and Museum Archives. were also briefly lovers. They shared an intense interest in the In his letters to Lyons, Thompson writes most of all about art of Southeast Asia. Lyons planned to write a monograph traveling around Thailand to collect antiquities and the probon Thai painting, as she continued to lecture for the State lems arising from the building of his grand house. Though the Department in the ensuing years. She also curated exhibitions, disappearance of the “Thai Silk King” remains shrouded in worked on an archaeological survey of Thailand, and assisted mystery, these records reveal something about his passion for with the opening of the new National Museum in Bangkok Southeast Asian art and the history of his collections. in 1967, as well as in planning provincial museums. It was in part through the efforts of Thompson and Lyons that art from alessandro pezzati is the Senior Archivist at the Museum.

Southeast Asia is much more highly prized today.

what in the world

Telmu and Petrui: A Rediscovered Romance?

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ome rare evidence for social change in ancient Etruria macintosh reposes in the Penn Museum’s turfa Mediterranean Section, in two large ovoid urns inscribed with Etruscan names. Even empty, the vases tell an unusual story about life in Etruria during the Roman takeover (ca. 350–100 BC). The Iron Age tradition of using the family’s water jars for burials was a comforting reminder of the way ancestors had lived. Both pottery shape and the incised lettering on the urns may be traced to 2nd to early 1st century BC Tarquinia, the great maritime city north of Rome. The names on the vases tell us more. The inscriptions read caes∙v∙v∙telmu (“Vel Caes Telmu, freedman of Vel”) and petrui telmus (“Petrui [wife] of Telmu”).

Caes is the Etruscan version of an old Latin name, Gaius, and V. stands for Vel, a favorite Etruscan given name. The formula V.V.—an abbreviation of Vel Velus or “Vel, son of Vel”—is similar to the Roman formula for manumission, or the freeing of one’s slaves. The freed slave took his master’s name and received a business, farm, or other type of investment to sustain himself and his future family. In Roman law

Emily Toner (map), Penn Museum

by jean

(patterned on Etruscan law) the freed person had limited civil rights, but his or her children would be citizens. One hotly disputed right was legal marriage with free-born citizens. In some cities, freed persons could co-habit, but their children could not inherit the family’s hard-earned property. In 264/3 BC, Volsinii (the modern city of Orvieto) was destroyed by a war over these rights.

Left, this map shows the Italian region of Tarquinia in ancient Etruria, where urns that once contained the remains of a married couple —Telmu and Petrui—were found. Right, Urn of Telmu, MS 3428; H. 37.6 cm. 2nd to 1st century BC, UPM Image # 5117.

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The former slave Vel Caes imitated the gentry by creating for himself a new family name, “Telmu,” formed from his old Greek slave name. Etruscan language does not use the letter “O,” so the famous Greek name Telamon (father of the strongman Ajax and uncle of Achilles) was changed to Telmu.

One may wonder if this was a deliberate choice of name for a brawny slave of Greek origin. If so, Telmu’s hard physical labor clearly paid off in his freedom.

The second urn has a shorter inscription, an abbreviation completed as Petrui Telmus puia or “Petrui, Telmu’s wife.”

This Etruscan woman took her husband’s new surname, at a time when aristocratic women usually added their husband’s name to their maiden name. Presumably Petrui was a commoner who had not used a surname before. If she had been enslaved, we would expect to see her master’s name: “Petrui, freedwoman of X, wife of Y.” There is no record of any slave or freedwoman called Petrui appearing in epitaphs, so our Petrui was likely a freeborn Etruscan woman who married a former

slave. The couple’s urns are not the random acquisitions of poor people. Also, the “occupants” of the urns—and the children who buried them—were literate, thus a cut above the ordinary. So we may assume that Telmu and Petrui had succeeded in life and were not embarrassed by Telmu’s original entry into Etruscan society as a slave. After all, with the wars in Italy and Rome’s foreign conquests, thousands of people must have seen their lives change dramatically during this time.

Another curious condition has been preserved: when man and wife were cremated and buried, each vase was wrapped in cloth that was pulled over the rim, then tucked inside and tamped in place with a bowl sealed with a coating of lime.

The patterns of the folds and fibers of the cloth are replicated in raised patterns on the surfaces. Only slight discoloration remains on Telmu’s urn, which was scrubbed vigorously by a 19th century dealer. Petrui’s urn bears ample traces of a mineralized textile: a fossil-like deposit that preserves the form of disintegrated cloth, in this case a simple cover or a garment woven of finely spun thread of linen or wool.

During the Iron Age (8th to 7th centuries BC), as Etruscan society grew stratified—with ruling elite, urban common classes, and slaves—citizens were often buried in urns that were “dressed” with helmets, clothing, or jewelry. The family of Telmu and Petrui, the former slave and his freeborn Etruscan wife, seems to have emulated the tradition of their betters in dressing the urns for their final rest.

Left, Urn of Petrui, wife of Telmu, MS 1124; H. 31.9 cm. 2nd to 1st century BC, UPM Image # 151986. Above, detail showing mineralized textile impression on the surface of Petrui’s urn, MS 1124. UPM Image # 151976.

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jean m ac i ntosh turfa is a Rodney S. Young Fellow in the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum. She is author of Catalogue of the Etruscan Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

from the field

Guerilla Fashion

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atricia michaels is not new to fashion, but she push change in is new to Santa Fe’s celeindian art brated Southwest Indian Art Market, a proving by lucy fowler ground for Native American artists, williams which takes place in August of each year. Michaels made her mark at last year’s 88th show with “Weathered Text: No Trespassing by the Taos War Chief,” a stunning, provocative non-traditional piece that took first prize in the textile class. The meticulously tailored jacket made of hand-painted silk and velvet, in hues of purple, blue, and reddish brown, stood out among the more familiar Navajo rugs and embroidered Pueblo mantas. It surprised and inspired judges and audience alike in its ability to transcend familiar concepts of Indian art. textiles in motion

Patricia Michaels’ woman’s jacket entitled “Weathered Text: No Trespassing by the Taos War Chief” won first prize in the Textile Classification at the 2010 Santa Fe Southwest Indian Art Market.

Patricia Michaels

Michaels is from Taos Pueblo, a Native American community and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in northern New Mexico. She speaks the Tiwa language fluently and is immersed in the traditions and values of her Pueblo culture. This year Michaels joins her community in celebrating the 40th anniversary of the return of Taos’ sacred Blue Lake and surrounding lands, the successful result of a 64-year struggle with the U.S. Government to reclaim religious freedom and protection of sacred places. I spoke with her during Market, and she offered the following words:

Julien McRoberts

At Taos, the way we live allows us to see that the environment is always changing, and we are always adapting to those changes. We truly do live with nature, and this fundamental idea is alive in my work. To create “Weathered Text: No Trespassing by the Taos War Chief” I took a photograph of a No Trespassing sign, a manmade thing. Nature had found its way to alter and affect and destroy the text of the sign. In addition to the rust and weather-beaten qualities, hunters had shot at the sign, frustrated they could not hunt on our land. Here we see that the nature of human beings is to destroy and fight. As an artist I do not do that.

Patricia Michaels’ interest in bringing change to Indian art is part of her activism and ongoing contribution as an America Indian. In her own words:

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Taos Pueblo fashion designer Patricia Michaels put her award-winning designs into motion on the streets of Santa Fe at this year’s Southwest Indian Art Market in a classic “guerilla fashion show” to boost change and support of Indian art. Her jacket is worn by the model on the right.

Michaels grew up in Santa Fe where she trained at the Institute of American Indian Art. She studied fashion design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and worked in collections at the Field Museum. She apprenticed with the Santa Fe Opera where she learned to design clothes that move with the body, and lived in Italy for two years where she trained with an Italian designer to learn sophisticated construction techniques. Most recently, Patricia has worked with the Kellogg Foundation to support indigenous fashion designers in Santa Fe and South Africa.

Her newest line for Fall 2010, which debuted at New York City’s Fashion Week, takes the bald eagle as its central theme.

Symbols of strength and connection to the spirit world, eagle feathers play a role in many Native American and Pueblo religious practices. On the runway, her printed feather images on silk layer and cascade in empire dress forms, and

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her stunning eagle feather cape evokes the majestic bird’s wingspan in flight.

The fashion industry is always changing as it defines and responds to current trends. Patricia Michaels has deliberately chosen the artistic medium of fashion as a metaphor that embodies a fundamental Pueblo cultural theme of movement. For hundreds of years, basic tenants of Pueblo cosmology, religion, and art have emphasized movement, change, and the breath of life.

After receiving her award, Michaels initiated a classic “guerilla fashion show” to make a statement and to encourage change in Indian art. Her entourage of 18 tall and slender black-haired models donned her jacket and some of her other clothing designs and literally stormed the Santa Fe Plaza en parade. In motion on the runway, whether in Santa Fe, at her home studio in Taos, or in New York City’s fashion houses, Michaels’ designs embody her message that Native Americans have always had to embrace change in order to survive. In so doing, she wants to encourage Pueblo arts that thrive and change. That creative energy is her sanctuary. Art and fashion express her creativity; she is not going to let others trespass into her world.

Additional award winners in the Textile Division included Diné artists D.Y. Begay, Alberta Henderson, Charlene Laughing, Mona Laughing, TaNibaa Naataanii, Barbara Ornelas, Michael Ornelas, Sierra Teller Ornelas, and Penny Singer; Pueblo embroiderer Isabel Gonzales; and Haida fashion designer Dorothy Grant. lucy fowler williams is the Jeremy A. Sabloff Keeper of American Collections at the Penn Museum. A specialist in textiles, she served as one of three textile judges at the 2010 Santa Fe Indian Art Market. Williams is working on Native American Voices, a new exhibition at the Penn Museum.

Julien McRoberts

Native Americans are too often equated with a few ideas and images, such as sitting on a buffalo robe or smoking an Indian pipe. But native people are so much more than that. So much thought goes into how we live our lives and how we preserve our culture. Those are the moments I want my work to be about. We are perceived as still living like the famous photographs

by Ansel Adams or Joseph Sharp or a mannequin of a Native American with a panoramic prairie in the background. We are so much more than those romantic images. When I do my work I try to represent those other moments or little vignettes or scenarios of the richness of our culture. Mother Nature is so strong, and that gives me strength in my design work. As a female, I want to show the nurturing side along with the strength of women. Silk is a natural, soft, beautiful and delicate fabric, yet it is the strongest fabric there is. This is why I use it in my work.

Afghan Wars, Oriental Carpets, and Globalization by brian spooner

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Textile Museum of Canada

he afghan war rugs on exhibit at the Penn Museum from April 30 to July 31, 2011, raise a number of interesting questions—about carpets, Afghanistan, and the way the world as a whole is changing. These rugs, which come in a variety of sizes and qualities, derive from a tradition of oriental carpet-weaving that began to attract the attention of Western rug collectors in the late 19th century. Unlike the classic museum pieces that were produced on vertical looms in the cities of western Asia for use in palaces and grand houses, war rugs came from horizontal looms in small tribal communities of Turkmen and Baloch in the areas of central Asia on either side of the northern border of Afghanistan—tribal communities that were incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century.

The craft of carpet weaving suffered serious disruption in the 1930s as a result of Soviet reorganization of these areas, which led some weavers to migrate into Afghanistan, where the craft revived and expanded through the 1970s. As the rug market grew, so did the purview of Western rug connoisseurship, which led the international trade. As the

This war rug depicts the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989. In the upper left corner, Soviet war machines and helicopters depart from the country while the rest of the landscape remains littered with weaponry (T2008.1.40, 79 cm x 60 cm).

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In a rural bazaar, Afghan men look at various oriental rugs. (Daulatabad, Afghanistan, August 1972)

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a brief history of oriental carpets Carpet-weaving began at least two and a half millennia ago, probably in central Asia. The earliest rug that has come down to us in any form was excavated at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, preserved in ice in the tomb of a Scythian prince. This woolen rug, which has over 200 knots to the square inch, is dated to the period immediately following the Achaemenian Empire (550–330 BC), suggesting royal patronage. We know the Achaemenians borrowed designs from the Assyrian Empire, with the craft of making carpets perhaps nurtured for generations in royal workshops. Textual evidence indicates that production continued at a high level of patronage under the Sasanian Empire (AD 224–651), through the Arab conquest and the emergence of Islamic civilization in the 7th century AD, down to the present time.

Mary Martin

interest of collectors moved down-market, it turned by degrees to different types of tribal rugs. When the demand for Baloch rugs began to rise in the 1970s, production spread to other parts of Afghanistan, including cities, and to Pakistan and eastern Iran.

Some Baloch weavers adapted both to changes in local conditions and to the changing international market, in which novelty carried a premium. New designs began to appear, inspired by the violence of the civil war that began after the revolution in 1978.

Cartoons of pastoral life were replaced by a bricolage of warrelated icons: soldiers (Soviet, American, Afghan), AK-47s, helicopter gunships, tanks, mujahedeen, and maps of Afghanistan.

The resulting war rugs tell us much not only about the oriental carpet industry and its evolving market, but also about Afghan society today and the way globalization is changing it.

Afghanistan’s War Experience

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fghanistan entered history in 1747. Nadir Shah, the Iranian ruler of the region, had been assassinated in Meshed (now northeastern Iran). One of his Afghan generals launched a new Afghan Empire from Qandahar (now southern Afghanistan), taking advantage of the decline of the Mughal Empire in India.

When emissaries from the British Imperial Government in Calcutta first arrived in the area in 1809, the Afghan Empire was the largest and strongest polity in the region, extending from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea and including Kashmir. But then Afghanistan became sandwiched between the expanding British and Russian (later Soviet) Empires, isolated from the rest of the world. When the British withdrew from India in 1947, Afghanistan emerged with a seat in the U.N. But a period of accelerating social and political change ended in 1978 in a revolution led by Soviet-trained Afghan Air Force officers, who installed a Soviet-style communist regime. Resistance was spontaneous. Civil war has continued since that time, exacerbated by the Soviet invasion in 1979. Millions fled the countryside to seek a new livelihood in the cities and in refugee camps across the borders of neighboring countries.

The Soviet army withdrew in 1989, but the disruption to the country’s political structure resulted in further civil war which was finally brought under control by the rise of the Taliban (students of religious schools). The Taliban were welcomed at first, but their regime soon became oppressive and was terminated in November 2001 by the American-led NATO response to 9/11. Since then the entire Afghan population of over 20 million may have suffered more from domestic warfare and its modern technology than any other country since World War II. Meanwhile, the continuing American and NATO military presence has met with increasing resistance in the form of guerilla activity, and Afghanistan, barely known by many in the West before, appears constantly in our newspaper headlines.

Top, the words at the center of this war rug translate as “Ghazi Amanullah Khan.” Amanullah Khan (1892–1960), portrayed here, helped lead Afghanistan to independence in 1919 and served as the Emir of Afghanistan for ten years (1919–1929) (T2008.1.99, 85 cm x 58 cm). Middle, Ahmad Shah Massoud, a prominent Afghan military leader during the Soviet conflict, is shown at the center of this rug (T2008.1.70, 148 cm x 95 cm). Right, over a red map of Afghanistan are four landmine victims, three adults and a child, with their arms and legs destroyed (T2008.1.56, 72 cm x 96 cm).

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Left, this Persian rug, woven around 1920, features a World War I biplane. It is the only known depiction of a warplane in an oriental rug prior to the 1980s (T2008.1.58, 117 cm x 86 cm). Above, the traditional floral patterns of oriental rugs are here transformed into images of Soviet Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters, tanks, fighter jets, and hand grenades (L2008.352, 203 cm x 119 cm). Page 15: Left, this war rug shows an assortment of helicopters, rocket launchers, tanks, and grenades, along with the red outline of Afghanistan (T2008.1.46, 153 cm x 112 cm). Right, at the center of this rug is a butterfly surrounded by weapons. It likely refers to the highly explosive “butterfly landmine,� which can be found at the bottom (T2008.1.13, 90 cm x 63 cm).

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Textile Museum of Canada

Carpets from Constantinople (modern Istanbul) began to appear in Western Europe through Venetian trade by the 13th century, as we know from contemporary paintings. Since people in medieval Europe ate at tables rather than on the floor, they used the carpets as tablecloths (as shown in the paintings), not as floor coverings. Today the earliest extant carpets (apart from the Pazyryk find) are Ottoman and appear to date from the 15th century. It was not until the 19th century, however, that the European market discovered tribal rugs.

Carpets are textiles, and textiles have been one of the most important traded commodities in world history, despite geographical differences in the fibers used. This craft has prospered in a variety of social settings, including isolated communities of pastoral nomads, small village oases, agricultural communities in the hinterland of urban market centers, and

Textile Museum of Canada

urban workshops. Central Asian carpet production benefited from the early availability of wool from domesticated sheep. There are various types of rugs, including exquisite large carpets, often with figurative designs, for use in palaces or estates—like those on permanent display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art—as well as humble prayer rugs with geometrical designs indicating the direction of prayer. Typical designs include gardens, hunting scenes, animals, jewelry, and, in prayer rugs, an Islamic prayer niche or mihrab. In their modern form, these carpets represent the continuation of a sophisticated pre-industrial technology.

War rugs are a new genre of oriental carpet; they symbolize the changing awareness of ordinary men and women in one of the poorest parts of the modern world, which has just recently been caught up in a variety of globalizing processes.

Unfortunately, the civil war in Afghanistan has prevented us from studying how these rugs are produced. Do they come from the initiative of the weavers themselves, or of middlemen on the lookout for new markets? Tracing the origin of any particular oriental carpet has always been difficult. Each rug

passes through a chain of intermediaries from the producer to the consumer. Each intermediary knows only his own particular sources and market opportunities, and cannot provide information about connections or motivations further up or down the chain. Traditionally, the weaver has known nothing about the international market, and the international consumer has had no connection to the weaver. With the appearance of war rugs, this is changing, as weavers respond to the market.

The earliest war rugs appear to have been designed to attract Soviet tourists, but were later adapted for the general market, and especially the American military, which arrived in 2001. The basic, and probably original, style of war rug is Baloch, a variety that has generally been produced on a smaller scale, with figurative rather than geometrical designs. But more recent examples of war rugs are Turkmen in quality and weave, and may be financed on a larger scale. Connoisseurs classify and evaluate carpets in terms of imputed age, provenance, the quality of materials (including dyes and colors), the design, the “handle” (feel or pliability), condition,

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How to Make A Rug

An Afghan woman and young girl work together to weave an oriental rug (Qala Nau, Afghanistan, July 1972).

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Mary Martin

W

e use the words carpet or rug for any floor covering, especially one with pile: that is, an evenly cut surface consisting of densely packed projecting threads, which are the ends of knots. Rugs are woven on looms made of stout wood. Most of the best rugs are made entirely from wool—a fiber that was abundant historically only in Central Asia.

Neither cotton nor silk were available in the early days of the industry. When these fibers became available later they were incorporated, but only to a small extent, more for purposes of color and design than for the quality of the fibers.

When sheep are sheared, the wool is carded and spun into three different qualities of thread: for the warp, the weft, and the knots that make the pile. The threads spun for each function are so different, even when they originate from the same animal, that non-specialists have difficulty in recognizing them all as the same fiber. For example, the warp thread, which is spun from the longest wool fibers, is as strong as other available non-woolen threads. The wool must then be dyed, often with the use of local plants such as madder, a Eurasian herb. All these materials are well within the reach of an isolated nomadic community, as well as urban workshops.

In the weaving process the ends of the warp threads are left to form a fringe at either end of the finished product. The webbing at the beginning and end of the weaving is often simple weft on warp, but may be elaborated by one or another of a number of flat-weave techniques, such as embroidery. The body of the carpet is made by tying rows of knots, one- or two-ply, around pairs of warp threads. Two basic types of knot are used in Afghanistan and the surrounding area, only one of which (the least common) is a true knot; the purpose is not the knot itself but the two protruding ends that form the pile.

After each line of knots, one or more weft threads are woven across the loom before the next row of knots. A good-quality carpet may have as many as 400 or more knots per square inch, though a carpet with no more than 100 may still be considered excellent on the basis of other criteria. In order to achieve the desired degree of tightness and evenness of weave, and density of knots, after every few rows of knots, the weaver beats the weft threads and the pile back toward her with a comb-like implement, the teeth of which fit over the warp threads. This action also has the effect not only of tightening the pile but of making it incline permanently in one direction, toward the end the weaver started from. For this reason, throughout the life of a fine carpet, light strikes the ends of the knots at a different angle according to the position of the viewer; in the case of some types of wool, and especially of silk, this makes the colors appear different from various angles. The design of the rug is in the color-patterning of the knots that form the pile. Designs have been traditional within families and tribal communities. As the weaving progresses, after every few inches the ends of the knots are sheared to even out the pile of the carpet at the desired height, which varies from less than 5 mm to 10 mm or more. The closer the ends of the knots are cut to the level of the weft-warp fabric, the finer the eventual product. The higher the number of knots per square inch, the less pliable is the rug. William Irons, an anthropologist who worked among Yomut Turkmen in Iran between the late 1960s and the mid 1970s, calculated that one woman could weave roughly one square foot in a day of heavy weaving, about 12 hours at the loom. Cheap labor has always been the key to the carpet industry—a factor that casts doubt on its future.

Textile Museum of Canada

fineness, and evenness of weave. War rugs in general do not rank highly on these criteria.

Since the rug trade began to grow several centuries ago, interest in this quintessential oriental furnishing has percolated down from the original aristocratic consumers, through various levels of the middle class in the 19th century, to an even broader circulation in the late 20th century. Interest has also expanded beyond the early museum pieces into the larger array of folk production from widely distributed rural communities throughout Central Asia. Turkmen tribes in western Central Asia—between northern Afghanistan and the Aral Sea—led this expansion, but the work of other Turkic tribes soon became known, as well as that of non-Turkic tribes that lived among them. Although the Baloch produced rugs that were less refined than those of the Turkmen, collectors still found them interesting and worth buying.

As the age of collecting evolved in the late 19th century, connoisseurship developed in Europe and America. By the second half of the 20th century, rug societies were formed, and rug journals were launched, such as Hali in Germany in 1978 and the Oriental Rug Review in America in 1981 (see websites at the end of this article). Oriental carpets became a standard stock item in Western department stores. Rug connoisseurship became the search for authenticity. But increasing instability and warfare has changed the market, the trade, and the collecting community. The interesting question now is: how will connoisseurship accommodate the success of the new genre of war rugs? The market for the new rugs, mostly priced between $200 and $1000, has expanded to include a variety of new customers who might not have become interested in oriental rugs per se. Finally, under globalization, the producer has come into a much closer market relationship than was possible earlier—with a new type of consumer.

emergence of war rugs Afghan war rugs receive a very different sort of attention today compared to Turkmen and Baloch rugs of earlier periods. Consumers are interested in the novelty of the war motifs found on the rugs. Afghan war rugs come from various parts of the country: from Taimani Baloch in Farah province in the west, from Baghlan in the north, and more recently from Pashtuns in the south. The more expensive carpets are still from Turkmen communities, mainly in the north. Local dealers indicate that most of the weaving is done by women, but men create the designs. A wide range of sophistication in design, workmanship, and size suggests that a large proportion of the production probably originates from refugee camps in northern Pakistan.

While the inspiration for this new genre of rug began in 1978, market interest in war rugs grew slowly. In 1988 an Italian rug dealer, Luca Brancati, opened an exhibition of 80

The text at the top of this rug reads “Afghanistan Welcome to Peshawar,” suggesting that it might have been woven by Afghan refugees in or near the city of Peshawar in Pakistan (T2008.1.23, 77 cm x 61 cm).

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This manuscript page, dated to 1530, includes a miniature with a typical Persian battle-scene (14.5 x 23.4 cm).

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Even though Afghan war rugs did not please connoisseurs, they gradually began to attract attention among a new audience interested in images of war. The representation of war in art has a long history. War scenes were painted in medieval Persian miniatures in representation both of classical themes and, under the Mughal Empire, in praise of the current royal victor. But none of the three Anglo-Afghan wars (1839, 1871, and 1919) was represented in rug design. Now, however, globalization has brought a broader awareness of world affairs to the rural weaver. Even as early as 1973, Turkmen weavers who visited the Penn Museum for an exhibition of Afghan carpets offered to weave a rug with a portrait of President Nixon in the center field. We settled at the time for a small rug with the Penn Museum logo.

Afghan war rugs represent the first effort of Afghan weavers to cater directly to an international market. They are looking for ways to earn a living. According to the International Trade Center (affiliated with the U.N.), close to two million handmade rugs reach the international market every year from the Afghanistan region. The market is saturated, at least with the quality of rug an ordinary weaver can make. Weavers are innovating in order to get an edge on the competition in the international market.

Afghans make war rugs because of their continuing experience with war. Their reaction to that experience has changed as they have been caught up more and more in the international economy and the globalizing processes which war has brought to them, undermining their sense of local identity, and the relationships that they relied upon in day-to-day life: family, kinship, gender, village, and tribe. Afghans are looking for new opportunities. They thought to use a representation of what the outside world brought to them as a way of finding a place in the outside world that has taken them over.

Why do we buy these rugs? Most who buy war rugs are not traditional ruggists. War rugs constitute a new product, and those who purchase them constitute a new clientele.

These rugs challenge us, because they would not be produced, and would not appeal to us today in the way they do, if it were not for the divergence of East and West over the past 300 years. Past identities are being renegotiated.

This is not the first time that textiles have led social change.

Apart from providing one of the earliest commodities of longdistance trade, the textile industry led the industrial revolution, and more recently the rise of multi-nationals. Now textiles are changing the way ordinary Afghans interact with the

Brown University Library

Afghan war rugs in Turin. These rugs were inspired by the Soviet occupation and were billed as Russian-Afghan War Carpets. In 1989, the exhibit traveled to the United States.

Other similar exhibits followed in Europe and America.

Oriental carpets had entered a new arena. The interest they attracted was very different from that of the oriental carpets of the past. Some saw them as protest art, some as tourist art. How else could we explain the sudden replacement of traditional designs with tanks, helicopter gunships, kalashnikovs, occupation maps, Soviet soldiers, and GIs? Although we do not know if this is the case, the idea that ordinary people in Afghanistan were protesting against war through their carpet weaving was appealing to consumers.

Textile Museum of Canada

In 1989, the Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan after ten years of conflict, leaving President Muhammad Najibullah in charge. He is depicted here as a Soviet puppet under a hammer and sickle. In the lower right corner, refugees are shown fleeing the country as a decade of civil war broke out (T2008.1.10, 102 cm x 69 cm).

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This war rug highlights the global landscape of modern warfare, including references to the Pentagon and the date of September 11th on a computer monitor (T2008.1.110, 86 cm x 58 cm).

brian spooner is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator for Near East Ethnology at the Penn Museum.

He has worked in Afghanistan since 1963 on rug weaving and other traditional technologies. Dr. Spooner curated a 1973 exhibition of Afghan carpets at the Penn Museum.

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For Further Reading Bonyhady, Tim, and Nigel Lendon. The Rugs of War. Canberra: Australian National University School of Art Gallery, 2003.

Mascelloni, Enrico. War Rugs: The Nightmare of Modernism. Milano: Skira, 2009.

Spooner, Brian. “Weavers and Dealers: The Authenticity of an Oriental Carpet.” In The Social Life of Things, edited by Arjun Appadurai, pp. 195-235, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Websites Hali (rug journal): www.hali.com Oriental Rug Review: no longer published, but old issues available at www.rugreview.com Textile Museum of Canada: www.textilemuseum.ca/apps/index. cfm?page=exhibition.detail&exhId=271 www.spongobongo.com/warguide.htm warrug.com

Penn Museum thanks the Textile Museum of Canada for providing images of war rugs included in this article. Text describing each rug was adapted from material provided by the Textile Museum. Special thanks are due to Roxane Shaughnessy, Curator, Collections & Access.

Textile Museum of Canada (top), Brian Spooner (bottom)

world around them, enabling them to cross the boundaries that have isolated them from the modern world over the past century. At the same time, this new genre is breaking down the boundaries that have separated the carpet industry from other sectors of the Afghan economy, and carpet design from other art forms.

On a broader geographical stage the rugs illustrate the changing social organization of trade and economic entrepreneurship in marginalized communities, and how the impact of globalization on poorer parts of the world is disrupting traditional practices and encouraging rural communities to scramble to catch up with the changing world around them.

By exhibiting these rugs, the Penn Museum shows also how the role of museums is changing—displaying a new type of material, a century or so after large public museums first provided a window onto the material culture of the world beyond our experience.

Resurrecting Gordion Preserving Turkey’s Phrygian Capital by frank g. matero and c. brian rose

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rchaeology and heritage conservation have become important partners in the excavation, preservation, and display of archaeological sites around the world. With rare exception, most archaeological sites are created through excavation, and they become “heritage” through a complex process of study, intervention, and visitation that involves a number of disciplines beyond archaeology. It is largely tourism that drives the need to expose and display sites, which shifts the priorities of archaeological research to managing deterioration (as a result of exposure) and interpreting buildings, features, and site histories. Input from the archaeologist, conservator, and design professional at the beginning of a project determines the success or failure of how a site is ultimately preserved, interpreted, and exhibited.

Beyond this, many archaeological sites have special meaning to the local residents, who have claimed these places as part of their cultural and/or ethnic heritage long before the first shovelful of earth has been removed for scientific study.

A new conservation program for the Phrygian capital of Gordion, well known in antiquity as well as today for its associations with King Midas and Alexander the Great, will safeguard the extensive yet rapidly deteriorating remains of this great citadel and transform it into a vibrant component of the region’s economy and identity.

Emily Toner

gordion—a turkish treasure Located in central Turkey, approximately 70 km southwest of Ankara, Gordion was the center of the Phrygian kingdom that ruled much of Asia Minor during the early first millennium BCE. It was also one of the most important cultural and political centers of the ancient world. Located at the intersection of the great empires to the east (Assyrians,

Babylonians, Hittites) and the west (Greeks, Romans), it occupied a strategic position on nearly all trade routes that linked the Mediterranean with TURKEY the Near East. The city became especially prominent shortly after the Phrygians settled there in the Gordion is located in central Turkey.

12th century BCE, and it continued to be a military and commercial center even after the Persian conquests in the mid-6th century BCE. During the 3rd century BCE, the city was settled by the Celts, whose practice of human sacrifice is documented by new skeletal discoveries.

Excavations at Gordion have been conducted by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology since 1950, and have revealed at least ten occupation levels spanning a period of nearly 3,000 years. The Early Phrygian (ca. 950–800 BCE) palaces and public buildings were built primarily of timber and mudbrick on stone foundations, and they contain the earliest known examples of geometric pebble mosaics, the patterns of which suggest that the artists were experts in weaving and textile design. The citadel was surrounded by massive stone fortifications whose early gate is one of the most complete to survive from that period in the ancient Near East, along with sections of stone fortification walls. The site’s destruction in 800 BCE is one of the few in Asia Minor that can be precisely dated, and Gordion therefore serves as an anchor for the chronology of the eastern Mediterranean during the early first millennium BCE.

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Famous Rulers at Gordion

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s the political and cultural capital of the Phrygians, Gordion was one of the most important sites in the ancient Near East, but it is more commonly remembered as the power center of kings Gordias and Midas (allegedly of the “Golden Touch”), and as the location of an intricate knot that was cut by Alexander the Great.

Our information regarding the former king is limited: an oracle had reportedly informed the inhabitants of Gordion that they should acclaim as king a man who entered the city on an ox-cart, and Gordias or his son Midas was the first to do this, thereby earning the right to rule. The ox-cart—and the knotted bark attached to it—was subsequently enshrined within the citadel as an object of reverence.

So much for the legend; but Midas was actually an historical character whose career (ca. 740–700 BCE) is described in contemporary writing. Greek and Roman authors indicate that he married the daughter of the ruler of the Greek city of Kyme and was the first nonGreek to have made a dedication at the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi.

The most important references to Midas are in the Assyrian Annals, where he is referred to as Mita of Mushki. During the last quarter of the 8th century BCE, Phrygian control extended over much of central Asia Minor, and Midas’s support against the Assyrians was increasingly sought by cities in the Upper Euphrates region. Tumulus MM, the largest tomb at Gordion, was once regarded as the tomb of Midas himself, but it is more likely to have been built by Midas at the beginning of his reign to honor his predecessor. The mound was nevertheless just as much a monument to Midas himself in that it was the largest burial mound in Asia Minor, and would remain so until the construction of the tomb of the Lydian king Alyattes at Sardis nearly 200 years later.

Meanwhile, the famous ox-cart continued to be venerated within the city long after the Phrygian kingdom had come to an end, and acquired yet another layer of meaning: an oracle prophesied that whoever untied the intricate bark knot attached to the cart would become ruler of Asia. When Alexander the Great arrived at the city in 333 BCE, he sliced through the knot when his attempts to untie it were unsuccessful, thereby, in a sense, fulfilling the prophecy. This forceful action still remains as a common expression in English, wherein “cutting the Gordian knot” refers to decisively solving a seemingly intractable problem.

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Surrounding the citadel is a rolling landscape dominated by almost 100 elite tombs (tumuli), most of which date between 900 and 500 BCE. The largest of these tumuli, 300 m in diameter and 53 m in height, has been identified as the tomb of Gordias (ca. 740 BCE), the eponymous founder of the city and the father of the legendary King Midas (ca. 740–700 BCE). The tomb chamber, approximately 5 by 6 m, lay 40 m below the surface, and it represents the earliest known intact wooden structure in the world.

Inside, the tomb contained intricate inlaid wooden furniture, bronze vessels, and textile bedding with patterns of purple and brown dyes, subsequently analyzed by the Penn Museum’s Applied Science Center for Archaeology.

Since the initial opening of the site in 1950, modest site preservation has protected the extensive architectural remains from destruction. In 2006 a new program of site conservation was launched integrating documentation, analysis, intervention, and interpretation of the citadel and its surrounding landscape. The Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism now holds foreign archaeologists responsible for the sites that their institutions have excavated, and the Penn Museum has responded through a new and aggressive program of site conservation, research, and maintenance.

a plan for conservation In 2007, the Architectural Conservation Laboratory of Penn’s School of Design, under Professor Frank Matero, completed a five-year Conservation and Management Plan for the Gordion citadel. The plan and its implementation represent Penn Museum’s renewed commitment to the conservation of the site and vicinity, recognizing the role of Gordion in any program of sustainable development of the region’s cultural heritage in central Turkey. The current project is based on an integrated and phased program of academic research, site conservation, regional survey, and heritage training.

The ancient landscape of Gordion consists of a dominating citadel mound (a) surrounded by a settlement (b), secondary fortifications (c), and a royal cemetery of tumuli including the “Midas Mound” MM (d), as well as the village of Yassıhöyük (e), 1950.

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Penn Museum Gordion Archive (top), Architectural Conservation Laboratory (bottom)

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Gordion’s ancient citadel mound is a distinctive presence on the central Anatolian horizon, representing three millennia of human occupation. The mass and contour of its constructed form, together with associated mound features representing the lower town and outer fortifications nearby, define the ancient Phrygian capital. Since 1950 the citadel mound has been transformed through excavation, which also resulted in the creation of large spoil heaps along its outer slopes. Removal of these deposits to both restore the mound profile and stabilize erosion as backfill for eroded excavation scarps and trenches will do much to reinstate Gordion’s largest and most characteristic feature. Also critical to the stabilization

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Site plan of phased conservation activities over the next five years.

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Architectural Conservation Laboratory

Above, aerial view of Gordion citadel, 2010. Below, visitor circuit with new stone steps, railings, and wayside pavilion design, 2009.

of the mound as well as the surrounding tumuli will be the implementation of a re-vegetation and land-use plan under development by the Museum’s Dr. Naomi Miller and partners from Middle East Technical University.

The perception of any settlement depends on the relationship of its parts; however, it is in the architectural details that the buildings, fortification walls, enclosed and open spaces, and paved areas of Gordion are readily discernible and understood. Gordion possessed all these features in a brilliant composition of urban design which is currently illegible due to deterioration and a variety of past presentation approaches.

In order to re-establish the architectural form and structural stability of the buildings, a range of techniques—including selective reburial, stabilization, restoration, and partial reconstruction—have been implemented simultaneously.

Architectural form and building fabric are currently being interpreted according to a set of guidelines that carefully mediate between the reestablishment of the overall plan and the preservation of architectural fabric. “Authenticity” here becomes a relative term that must find a balance in protecting future archaeological value while exposing and displaying ancient structures for viewing. Examination of the excavation photographs from the 1950s and 60s reveals a site very different from the current landscape. Many buildings and enclosure walls were readily discernible; constructed of stone and mudbrick with evidence of heavy timber framing, they stood in some cases over 1 m in height. Pavements of stone, cobble, mosaic, and plaster clearly differentiated interior and exterior spaces. Although years of prolonged exposure degraded these materials (mudbrick) and construction techniques (rubble-core masonry walls), some features such as the stone pavements and megaron walls (see below) were subsequently reburied for protection. Currently, various presentation techniques are under

Penn Museum Gordion Archive (top), Architectural Conservation Laboratory (middle and bottom)

development to reveal and display walls and pavements by excavation, capping, encapsulation, and replication. Each of these techniques will be tested, and their application to a particular building or area will depend on the archaeological significance of the feature, its condition, and its contribution to the plan.

Excavation deep within the citadel mound has revealed the ancient Phrygian capital prior to destruction (ca. 800 BCE), and has created a unique situation for viewing. Visitors ascend the mound at the entrance gate, and from the top have an extraordinary view into the city and out across the landscape. This remains one of the site’s most compelling aspects and is currently threatened by the instability of both the eroding scarps and the poorly delineated trail and barriers. A circuit atop the perimeter of the mound allows visitors a 360 degree view of the citadel and surrounding landscape, which is now being augmented by 12 covered pavilions designed by PennDesign professor Lindsay Falck, with corresponding signage describing relevant buildings, features, and history.

The recent building and site condition survey has identified the potential for serious deterioration and structural collapse of a number of important structures, including the Early Phrygian gate, the Middle Phrygian walls, the Terrace Building, and numerous megarons. These and other buildings and architectural features are currently the focus of the Gordion conservation program, which includes research into the construction techniques of the Phrygians, informed by 3D laser imaging, and material analyses.

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Above, comparative post-excavation site weathering, view looking east: a) 1957 and b) 2009. Below, laser image of the citadel gate and surrounding area, 2009.

The Gate (ca. 900 BCE) The citadel gate, a massive and nearly complete stone structure of enormous architectural and historical importance, is of the highest priority.

Recent engineering assessments have identified the gate displacement and open wall tops to be

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Gate entrance showing Early and Middle Phrygian masonry and trenched later Phrygian fill, view looking west (a) and east (b), 2010.

The Walls The Early and Middle Phrygian stone walls are a critical component of the citadel’s delineation and evolution over time, and are among the largest architectural remains still standing.

The polychromatic effect of the multi-colored stone blocks reveals the Phrygians’ love of color; however, the many different types of stone display a range of deterioration, and their superimposition over earlier walls has led to instability and collapse. Temporary shoring, structural reintegration, and consolidation are all needed to restore large sections of the standing walls.

The Terrace Building The linear eight-room Terrace Building was a complex of workshops and storage rooms for weaving, food processing, and other activities. The surviving stone walls, nearly com-

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plete in plan, require extensive stabilization using an innovative interior “corset” of stainless steel cables and pins. Once features such as storage bins and hearths have been reinstated, the visitor will be afforded a glimpse into the famed production sector of the Early Phrygian citadel.

The Megarons The principal megarons flanking the Terrace Building platform were civic elite buildings, most likely richly ornamented on both the exterior and interior. At the time of excavation significant wall remains of stone, mudbrick, and timber clearly attested to their construction methods. Of unparalleled significance was the discovery in Megaron 2 of the earliest known complete pebble mosaic, which features both exquisite design and execution. Reburied for temporary protection, these buildings now need to be re-excavated, their walls stabilized, and floor features conserved and reinstated. Of particular interest and importance is the conservation and restoration of the pebble mosaic, currently in the Gordion Museum, that is now funded by the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

planning and heritage training For many years, archaeological fieldwork at Gordion has benefited from the involvement of numerous academic institutions. More recently, site conservation has benefited from the

Architectural Conservation Laboratory

a serious safety issue to the excavators and the visiting public as well as a risk to the integrity of the structure. Centuries of seismic activity and crushing from the superimposed later Middle Phrygian gate have caused instability in the masonry that now must be temporarily shored and structurally monitored for movement while test stabilization methods are modeled. Vegetative “soft” caps have been installed as a creative, low-impact method to protect the gate tops based on green roof technology and last year’s field experiments.

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Installation of vegetative “soft” caps on north gate complex: (a) existing concrete cap prior to intervention, (b) “soft” cap protection layer, (c) capillary break layer, (d) filter layer, (e) completed “soft” caps, (f) view looking east of completed north gate “soft” wall caps, 2010.

Work Continues at Gordion

Architectural Conservation Laboratory

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joint project under the auspices of the Penn Museum and the Architectural Conservation Laboratory of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania is currently underway to implement a conservation program for Gordion. This project addresses the long-overdue need to put into effect an integrated program of emergency stabilization, building conservation, and interpretation, including a visitor circuit and wayside stations for the Gordion citadel. This proposed work is the direct result of a preliminary conservation planning study by the University of Pennsylvania and Middle East Technical University on the great citadel and within the surrounding landscape. The project is unique in its integrated approach, which involves the simultaneous collaboration of archaeology, ethnography, conservation, and design. Previous funding for this work supported the current conservation plan. Sponsorship is now urgently needed to begin implementation of the more critical needs related to the collapse of the great Phrygian gate and defensive walls. Overseeing the project are Frank Matero (Penn School of Design) and Brian Rose (Penn School of Arts and Sciences). Current funding for the Gordion Citadel Conservation Project comes from the 1984 Foundation, Global Heritage Fund Preservation Foundation, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Storer Foundation, and the Selz Foundation.

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participation of students from the University of Pennsylvania and Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara.

The number of visitors is likely to increase as the site conservation program accelerates, and in time, Gordion will constitute a substantial income-generating tourist and educational market as required by national and regional authorities. The new Gordion project has also begun to assess the economic and social values of developing the site for tourism through collateral research underway by the Faculty of Architecture at Middle East Technical University and the Penn Museum.

Both programs will provide opportunities for training local and American conservators and heritage specialists.

As recommended by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, a Conservation Management Plan for Gordion and存 its environs is being developed by an interdisciplinary

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Architectural Conservation Laboratory

Terrace Building (TB2), demonstration of various wall masonry conservation techniques: (a) before treatment, (b) stone replacement, (c) drilling for adhesive repair, (d) structural retrofitting, (e) wall capping, (f) after treatment, 2009. Below, documentation of the current display of lifted Megaron 2 mosaic at the Gordion Museum, 2010.

Penn Museum Gordion Archive (top), Penn Museum (bottom)

Megaron 2 during excavation and discovery of pebble mosaic pavement, 1956.

team from METU under Professor Evin Erder and Dr. Ayse Gürsan-Salzmann. In 2007, a GIS database was generated for Gordion and its near environs. Using the cumulative ethnographic information as a guideline, the project is surveying and documenting all values—archaeological, architectural, historical, economic, socio-cultural, and ecological—within a 40 km2 area of Gordion in order to create a vision and policies for sustainable development and conservation of the area. In 2008–2009 the focus of the fieldwork was to survey Yassıhöyük, a nearby village with strong ties to Gordion, and the first step was taken toward the systematic recording and analysis of rural communities within the 1st and 3rd degree protected zones at Gordion.

Three thousand years after its founding and only 60 years after its excavation by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania, ancient Gordion will slowly reveal itself, as a multi-disciplinary team of academics and professionals together with local authorities and residents contemplate the past and future of King Midas’s legendary city.

frank g. matero is Professor of Architecture and Historic Preservation, and founder and director of the Architectural Conservation Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania. c. brian rose is the James B. Pritchard Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, Deputy Director of the Penn Museum, and co-director of the Gordion excavations.

Frank G. Matero and C. Brian Rose.

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In Search of San Pietro d’Asso by stefano campana, michelle hobart, and richard hodges

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he via cassia was one of the main arteries connecting Rome to its northwest provinces. It crossed the rolling hills of Tuscany, passing by way of Siena, before veering towards the river Arno and then northwards. With the transformation of Rome into a holy city in medieval times, the Cassia became the Via Francigena (the Franks’ way), possibly the most important highway in Christendom. Along it, pilgrims and travelers toiled towards the eternal city. It is no coincidence, then, that as early as the 7th century, monasteries were established to support and, indeed, exploit this traffic.

Until recently these monastic houses were poorly known.

Instead, archaeologists had concentrated upon understanding the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages from the standpoint of rural settlement, charting the beginnings of Tuscany’s iconic

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Students excavate the foundations of an early medieval tower, overlooking the scenic Val d’Asso. Right, Sigeric the Serious, the Archbishop of Canterbury, traveled the Via Francigena to and from Rome. This map shows Sigeric’s itinerary in the 10th century.

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An aerial view of the hilltop of San Pietro d’Asso was photographed by a robot drone.

This silver coin was found near the hilltop. It was minted

by Conrad II, founder of the Germanic Salian Dynasty (1027–1039).

BACK

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FRONT

hilltop towns. But with new excavations beside the river Arno at San Genesio—where a monastic community has recently been excavated—and a comparable investigation beside the river Asso at Pava, the first evidence of the ecclesiastical world close to the Cassia has come to light. Additionally, 12th century monastic communities, like the abbey at Sant’Antimo, with its distinctive francophone Romanesque architecture, flourished close to this celebrated pilgrim route. During a sur-

vey of the territory of Montalcino, the discovery of a putative hilltop monastery at San Pietro d’Asso—a monastery founded, according to an 8th century source, by a mid-7th century Lombard king—appeared to be geographically at odds with these other monasteries and an altogether intriguing settlement. The Penn Museum excavation in July 2010, supported by the University of Siena and the Comune of Montalcino, set out to establish exactly what this hilltop site was.

the hilltop Sherds of early medieval pottery, including the distinctive green-glazed Forum Ware, were found close to a knoll at the north end of the hill, on which traces of a small mortared stone building were just visible above the surface. Were these elements of the early medieval monastery mentioned in an AD 714 dispute between the bishops of Arezzo and Siena? If so,

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Clockwise, an aerial view of the farmhouse was photographed by a robot drone. Students Jennifer McAuley, James Macrae, and Caitlin Costello excavate one of four graves found in a small cemetery adjacent to the church, and one of the skeletons uncovered. The abbey of Sant’Antimo is shown on the right, with its borgo (village) Castelnuovo dell’Abate in the background. Part of a Romanesque church at the site (interior shown here) was used as a stable in modern times.

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where were the potsherds belonging to later phases of settlements, leading up until the time San Pietro was taken over by neighboring Sant’Antimo in the late 12th century? Were other buildings—either post-built or of pisé (essentially clay walls), following the early medieval vernacular tradition— somehow concealed in the main body of the long narrow hilltop? Excavations on the knoll and on the main body of the hill soon revealed an entirely different story. Absolutely nothing was found in the main body of the hilltop. Only on the knoll was there any occupation, and this was not monastic in the strict sense. A tower with a north-south axis measuring 5.10 m by 3.56 m was built to a height of several courses, and then altered entirely. The second phase of the tower was exactly twice the size of the first, but like the first, it was aborted after reaching less than 0.6 m high. An unstratified silver denier found close by, minted by Conrad II of Germany (1027–1039), indicated that this foreclosure occurred early in the 11th century, a date confirmed by the sherds of cooking pots associated with the small builders’ yard on the south side of the tower. It soon became clear that the monastery of San Pietro d’Asso, ascribed to the 7th century Lombard King Aripert, was most definitely not located on the hilltop.

the farmhouse church Occupying a terrace immediately below the hilltop, overlooking the flood plain of the river Asso, is an abandoned farmhouse. This 19th century building incorporated an earlier Romanesque church, the south aisle of which stands almost to eaves’ height; this was employed until recently as a stable. Clearance followed by limited excavations around the apsidal end of the building showed that in the Romanesque era the church had possessed three apses. The southern and central apses were of a distinctive Romanesque ashlar construction, while the earliest (pre-Romanesque) northern apse was constructed with roughhewn rubble, similar in many respects to the early chapel at nearby Sant’Antimo, and not unlike the construction of the hilltop tower. In front of this earliest apse was a simple cemetery where we uncovered four shallow graves. From unstratified levels in this area came an early medieval copper alloy tag, lending plausible weight to the proposition that the Romanesque church

had an early medieval precursor. Surveys of the farmhouse revealed remains of other well-preserved buildings of the Romanesque era immediately south of the church, while the central nave, in a reduced form, was retained as a simple chapel that was used until comparatively recently. A geophysical survey of the terrace that the farmhouse occupies indicated the presence of major buildings, with some walls plainly evident. Traces of skeletal remains on the far northeast edge of the terrace also suggested the presence of a cemetery.

It is most likely that this was a Romanesque monastic church that owed its origins to an early medieval foundation. The rich architecture in the surviving details reflects the wealth of connections and support such a pilgrimage church might have enjoyed before its star was eclipsed by its neighbor, Sant’Antimo.

future research This season established that the monastery of San Pietro d’Asso occupied a terrace close to the river, not unlike the broadly contemporary churches at Pava and Sant’Antimo.

Unlike Pava, it outlasted the early Middle Ages and thrived into the 12th century, before being subsumed under Sant’Antimo. Like Sant’Antimo it embarked upon establishing its own borgo or village, with a fortified tower—the quintessential hallmark of new towns at this time. But unlike Castelnuovo dell’Abate, above Sant’Antimo, which thrives today, the castle above San Pietro d’Asso was never finished.

Why this was the case, as the monastery was on the eve of its zenith in the Romanesque era, remains intriguing and unknown. This unexpected story will compel us to look more closely at the overall history of ecclesiastical power alongside the Via Cassia, and of course sets the scene for exploring what the first monastery at San Pietro d’Asso looked like. stefano campana is Associate Professor in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Siena. michelle hobart is Adjunct Professor of Medieval Archaeology at Cooper Union in New York. richard hodges is Williams Director of the Penn Museum, and Director of the Institute of World Archaeology, UEA, Norwich, England.

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A Month in Montalcino by adrianna de svastich and jennifer mcauley

The central bell tower in Montalcino is the highest structure in the small town.

Led by Richard Hodges, Stefano Campana, and Michelle Hobart, 14 undergraduates joined the excavations at San Pietro d’Asso in July 2010. Two of these students reflect on their experiences in field school and time spent in the Italian countryside.

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O

ur adventures began the moment our plane touched down on Italian soil.

Getting to Rome was only the first step— we soon realized that many roads do not have names, and our trip quickly turned into a navigational nightmare. One of many close calls occurred when the stick shift broke in our van, causing it to roll down a steep hill towards a sharp drop-off. Thankfully, we all made it unscathed to Montalcino, the picturesque hilltop town we would be calling home for the next month.

Any fears we had about living in Italy swiftly dissolved as we drove through the medieval town: worn cobblestones lined the winding streets, flowers and vines hung from brightly painted windowsills, and the central bell tower rose into the sky. The view from the town into the Tuscan countryside below was beyond stunning, with endless green and gold hills that seemed to ebb and flow like the sea. As we settled into our accommodations at the local elementary school, we soon realized that our living situation would not be as wondrous as the rest of our surroundings. We slept on cots in classrooms, shared a single mirror, and had to trek down the street wrapped tightly in our towels to gain access to the communal showers. Yet without the luxury of privacy, we quickly became friends, and unanimously agreed that the charm and history of Montalcino more than made up for any passing discomfort.

Every morning we stumbled from our cots at dawn to the local café, hoping that a frothy cappuccino and warm cornetto (Italian croissant) would fortify us for a day of digging. We spent each day at San Pietro d’Asso hard at work;

the group was divided between the medieval church and the hilltop, where we unearthed a monastic watchtower from the same period. Following a delicious lunch of fruit, Italian bread, and prosciutto at the site, we were ready to venture back to Montalcino and looked forward to the prospect of a shower and an afternoon siesta.

After a hard day of digging, we would explore the town: the piazza, the cafés, the gelaterias, and the shop windows brimming with bottles of Brunello wine. We came to know the town’s elderly gentlemen who would chat on park benches while their wives aired laundry from open windows. We practiced our Italian with the locals who worked in the shops and restaurants, and even learned how to prepare a traditional Italian meal from our cooks at the school. The smell of fresh pasta, smoky prosciutto, and Tuscan wine seemed to swirl through the air. Even though we were often caught up in the hectic atmosphere of the dig, somewhere along the way we learned to slow down and enjoy the simple pleasure found in new friends, good food, and great wine. We expected to work hard and learn about medieval churches.

However, we never anticipated just how much we would learn about the vibrant Tuscan culture. adrianna de svastich and jennifer m c auley excavated at San Pietro d’Asso during the summer of 2010. They are undergraduates in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Jennifer McAuley and Adrianna de Svastich.

Left top, Dr. Michelle Hobart shows student Adena Wayne how to piece together pottery sherds. Left bottom, students of the Penn archaeology field school gather for a group photograph at the abbey of Sant’Antimo, Montalcino, Siena.

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Archaeometry and Shipwrecks A Review Article by james d. muhly

From Mine to Microscope: Advances in the Study of Ancient Technology edited by Andrew J. Shortland, Ian C. Freestone, and Thilo Rehren (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2009). 230 pp., numerous black and white photographs and drawings, $120.00, ISBN 978-1-84217-259-9.

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Mike Tite doing fieldwork in the Western Desert of Egypt.

Tite’s early interest in thermoluminescence dating (TL) soon led to a long-standing interest in the use of the scanning electron microscope (SEM), involving work with Yannis Maniatis, one of his former students. Maniatis went on to

Andrew Shortland

he volume from mine to microscope represents an important collection of articles by colleagues and former students of Michael (“Mike”) Tite and is a fitting tribute to the work of a superb scholar who also happens to be a most humane individual and a wonderful colleague. The distinguished career of Tite reads very much like the history of the field of archaeometry in the second half of the 20th century. A BSc in physics (Oxford 1960) led to a DPhil (Oxford Research Laboratory 1965), under the supervision of Martin Aitken. After teaching at the University of Essex, Mike became Keeper of the British Museum Research Laboratory (1975– 1989) and then, in 1989, was appointed the Edward Hall Professor of Archaeological Science at the Oxford Research Laboratory (1989–2004), replacing his mentor, Martin Aitken. He also took over as editor of Archaeometry, the leading journal in the field of archaeological science. It is not possible to imagine the progress made in this field of research in the United Kingdom apart from the career of Mike Tite. Many of the essays in this volume go back to research conducted by the authors for the DPhil degree, done under the supervision of Professor Tite.

The C-14 laboratory at MASCA, 1959.

Research assistant Robert Stuckenrath points out a combustion tube to Dr. Alfred Kidder II, then Associate Director of the Penn Museum.

UPM Image # 63181

Ralph as Associate Director of MASCA (1961–1982)—including the use of the proton magnetometer in the search for ancient Sybaris (1961–1968) and the C-14 dating of organic samples from Museum excavations in Egypt and Mesopotamia— quickly established the importance of MASCA in an exciting new approach to archaeological research.

Ralph had spent six weeks studying radiocarbon dating with Willard Libby at the University of Chicago, and the laboratory she subsequently established at the University Museum

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play a major role in the development of the Laboratory of Archaeometry at the Institute of Materials Science, part of Greece’s National Centre of Scientific Research known as Demokritos. Tite greatly expanded the importance of archaeometry in the UK, and Maniatis did the same for Greece. To the best of my knowledge these two scholars are still working together on several important research projects.

It is appropriate here to call attention to the crucial role played by the Penn Museum (then the University Museum) in the development of American research in archaeological science. In 1953, Elizabeth Ralph was hired by the Museum as a Research Associate. She worked in the development of carbon-14 dating, a radiometric method used to date organic materials from archaeological sites. When Museum Director Froelich Rainey created the Museum Applied Science Center of Archaeology (MASCA) in 1961, the discipline of archaeometry had not yet come into being. The important research carried out by Beth

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Above, Beth Ralph with combustion tube and equipment used in the process of converting organic material to carbon for dating, 1959. UPM Image # 90945. Below, Beth Ralph with an Olmec Head, 1971. The head was discovered by Ralph and her team during a Cesium Magnetometer Survey at San Lorenzo, Mexico, in 1969.

UPM Image # 180670

was the first one in the world devoted to the radiometric dating of archaeological materials. Two factors were important in making all this possible: a crucial grant from the National Science Foundation and the support of the then president of the University, Gaylord Harnwell, who was himself a physicist.

When it became clear that radiocarbon dates had to be “calibrated” because of variations in the production of atmospheric carbon 14, Ralph went to work with Henry Michael, a pioneer in the field of dendrochronology. Michael was able to provide the exact dates used to create a calibration curve for radiocarbon dates over a period of some 7,000 years. The result was the publication, in the MASCA Newsletter for 1973, of the famous “MASCA calibration curve,” quickly adopted by scholars all over the world. The career of Mike Tite, especially his work in radiocarbon dating, would not have been possible without the pioneering research conducted by MASCA. In order to give some indication of the riches to be found in the volume under review, we can look at work being done on objects made of clay, glass, and metal.

Work on ancient ceramics has become an essential part of current research in archaeometry. Yannis Maniatis has provided an excellent, detailed summary of what has been learned about the use of fired clay over the past 9,000 years. He argues that “the manufacture of this new material constitutes undoubtedly the first technological revolution in human history” (pp. 11-12). For anyone seeking an understanding of what such research is all about, this essay by Maniatis is the place to begin.

The production of glass came much later, long after work in materials such as frit and faience. It was not until the mid-second millennium BC that glass technology developed in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt; the development of that technology seems to have stimulated the contemporary practice of glazing ceramics, but only in Syria and Mesopotamia, according to the essay by S. Paynter (pp. 93-108). In Egypt the practice of glazing ceramics did not develop until the 1st century BC. There seems to be a basic technological explanation for these differences. In Mesopotamia and Syria both glass and glazed ceramics were made of alkali-fluxed materials, whereas when Egypt finally

© Trustees of the British Museum (top), Uluburun project, INA (bottom)

started to glaze ceramics, it made use of a lead-based technology (pp. 93-94). The reason for this lies in the types of clay that were locally available.

In the 14th century BC, however, the Egyptians were already producing master works in glass, especially the famous glass model of a tilapia fish from Amarna, certainly one of the best-known (and most photographed) objects of glass before the Roman period. Found during the British excavations at Amarna in 1921, it is now one of the prized possessions of the British Museum (see essay by A. Shortland, pp. 109-14). The actual technology of glass production is studied in a fine essay

by J. Henderson (pp. 129-38).

Bronze Age glass studies represent a “hot” research topic right now. There are two main reasons for this. The first is the recent discovery, at the Egyptian Delta site of QantirPiramesses, of the only known Bronze Age primary glass production site. The evidence for this has now been presented in a magnificent publication by E. B. Pusch and Th. Rehren (2007, see full citation at end of article). This two-volume work introduces a new era in the study of Bronze Age glass but is too recent to be included in From Mine to Microscope, a volume long delayed in production.

The second reason concerns recent analytical work on the large number of cobalt blue glass ingots within the cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck. It has now been established that this raw glass, known as cullet, was produced in Egypt (see C. M.

The earliest intact glass ingots of a disc shape found at the Uluburun shipwreck, Turkey. Chemical analyses have revealed the use of cobalt (on left) and copper (on right) as coloring agents.

Glass bottle in the form of a fish from el-Amarna, Egypt, 18th Dynasty (ca.

1390–1336 BC). Length 14.5 cm.

Jackson and P. T. Nicholson, 2010). There are also a number of cobalt blue glass beads from Mycenaean Greece. As these beads were certainly of local Mycenaean manufacture, they must have been made of raw glass imported from Egypt, as indicated by the analysis of several of these beads (see M. S. Walton, et al., 2009). This certainly implies that at least some of the blue glass from the Uluburun shipwreck was destined for markets in Mycenaean Greece. What does this tell us about the nature of the Uluburun ship itself?

the conundrum of the shipwrecks’ cargos When the Turkish government asked Froelich Rainey, back in 1958, if the University Museum had someone who could excavate what seemed to be an important shipwreck recently discovered off the southern coast of Turkey, Rainey did not hesitate to accept the offer. He then told George Bass, a young graduate student in Classical Archaeology at the University, that he was to be in charge of the project. Lack of diving experience was no excuse; the YMCA was offering lessons in scuba diving, using their swimming pool. This was the beginning of Bass’ remarkable career in nautical archaeology, first at Penn and then at Texas A & M University (see article by George Bass in Expedition 49(2):36-44).

Bass’ skill in fundraising was instrumental in the creation of a magnificent facility in Bodrum, Turkey, from which it was possible to organize a series of important excavations of shipwrecks from all periods, but all in Turkish waters. The 1960 excavation of the Late Bronze Age Cape Gelidonya

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shipwreck was a pioneering effort, carried out by a group of enthusiastic amateurs. By the early 1980s, with the discovery of a new Bronze Age shipwreck in much deeper water, the field of nautical archaeology had developed in remarkable ways, due mainly to the work centered in Bodrum and carried out by what is now known as INA, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

This new shipwreck, designated first as the Kas¸ wreck and then as the Uluburun shipwreck, electrified the archaeological world because of its amazingly rich cargo. The important thing is that both ships were carrying cargo that included ingots of copper and of tin. There is now general agreement that the Uluburun ship, dating to ca. 1300 BC, was carrying a cargo meant as a gift for a king, whereas the cargo of the Gelidonya ship, dating to ca. 1200 BC, was to be seen as the stock-in-trade of a sailing smithy.

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Nautical archaeologist takes notes underwater, using a grid system to record finds, at the site of Cape Gelidonya, Turkey, 1960–1961.

UPM Image # 148806

These are the conclusions of Zofia A. Stos. There is no doubt that her contribution has to be seen as the most important article in this volume in honor of Mike Tite (pp. 163-80). Furthermore, it has to be evaluated within the context of two other contributions to this volume, by A. M. Pollard (pp. 181-89) and by Noël H. Gale (pp. 191-96). All three contributions deal with the highly controversial subject of establishing metal provenance based upon the results of lead isotope analysis (LIA). They, in turn, hark back to a seminal essay by our honoree (“In defence of lead isotope analysis,” Antiquity 70 [1996]: 959-62). It is the LIA of the copper ingots from both shipwrecks that has propelled the study of the Gelidonya and Uluburun shipwrecks into the forefront of current research in Bronze Age Mediterranean archaeology.

When George Bass put out his final publication of the Cape Gelidonya shipwreck, in 1967, he was already very much aware of the special importance of the curious “oxhide”-shaped ingots included in the cargo of the wreck. Within the following forty-some years that importance has escalated dramatically. The Gelidonya ship was carrying a cargo of 34 complete copper oxhide ingots, plus numerous fragments, and a small number of very corroded tin ingots.

This was, at the time, the largest assemblage of such ingots ever discovered. The Uluburun ship, on the other hand, had a cargo that included 360 copper ingots and 160 tin ingots, weighing in total some 12 tons. This was a cargo of raw metal unlike anything ever seen before in Bronze Age archaeology. Hardly surprising that the discovery of the Uluburun shipwreck has totally revised all thinking regarding the scope of the Late Bronze Age metals trade in the eastern Mediterranean.

The copper used to make the oxhide ingots, and also the associated bun ingots, seems to have come from several copper mines on the island of Cyprus, a country long famous as a source of copper for the ancient world. No one really knows

Cape Gelidonya project, INA (top), Uluburun project, INA (bottom)

Above, at the end of the excavation at the Cape Gelidonya shipwreck, workers loaded copper ingots onto a dinghy to be delivered eventually to Bodrum.

Below left, archaeologist C. Peachy is shown restoring and consolidating damaged ingots at the Uluburun shipwreck using an underwater curing epoxy and plaster. Below right, two women hold a typical copper ingot of “oxhide� shape from the Uluburun shipwreck.

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Lavrion Copper

Above, Noël H. Gale, Zofia A. Stos-Gale, and Stavros Papastavros (IGME) were shown copper deposits underground in 1987 in the Christiana region (Kamareza, Lavrion) by an old mining engineer of the Compagnie Française des Mines du Laurium, who used his old acetylene lamp to illuminate the copper ores (azurite and malachite) in the walls of the gallery.

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Noël H. Gale and Zofia A. Stos-Gale

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hanks to a recent paper by N. H. Gale, M. Kayafa, and Z. A. Stos-Gale, it has now become necessary to reevaluate the question of copper from Lavrion. Published in 2009, their paper from the Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Archaeometallurgy in Europe, held in Aquileia, Italy, in June of 2007, entitled “Further evidence for Bronze Age production of copper from ores in the Lavrion ore district, Attica, Greece,” presents, for the first time, very convincing geological evidence for the existence of massive copper deposits in the Lavrion area, especially in the region known as Kamariza. In the oral presentation of this paper, in Aquileia, the authors showed many wonderful color photographs of some of these deposits. Most of this new evidence comes from a special issue of a German periodical called Lapis (vol. 24, nos. 7-8 for July-August 1999), devoted to “Lavrion, Griechenland.”

Problems remain, including the lack of extensive deposits of copper-smelting slag and the absence of any archaeological evidence for Late Bronze Age mining activity, but Lavrion is an area where mining activity, especially for silver-bearing lead ores, has been carried out from the fourth millennium BC down into the early 20th century AD. All traces of Bronze Age mining and smelting activity could well have been destroyed or buried by later workings in the area. The authors of this paper also claim that there are now 11 ingots made of Lavrion copper, including 3 from LM IB Mochlos, 3 from the Uluburun shipwreck, and 3 from the Cape Gelidonya shipwreck. The problem is that none of these ingots are in the characteristic oxhide shape; they tend to be either so-called bun or slab ingots. The two slab ingots from Tiryns are actually made of high-tin bronze and must represent material destined to be cast in object form. It is still true, therefore, that there are no oxhide ingots made of Lavrion copper. Nevertheless, serious attention must now be given to the existence of massive deposits of copper ore, still to be found at present-day Lavrion.

where the tin came from; its origin remains one of the great enigmas of the Bronze Age world. Sources as far away as Central Asia are now being seriously considered, but more for the Early Bronze Age than for later periods.

Stos deals not only with the LIA of the ingots but also that of the bronze artifacts from both shipwrecks, and this is where everything starts to get complicated and controversial. First of all, copper oxhide ingots are known from contexts far beyond the cargo of the two shipwrecks.

They have been found all over the Mediterranean world, including Cyprus, Crete, Greece (mainland and islands), South Italy, Sicily (including the island of Lipari), Sardinia, Corsica, and the south coast of France. Such ingots, whole or in fragments, have also been found in Germany, the western shore of the Black Sea, on the coast of southeastern Turkey, in Egypt, and even at the site of the Kassite capital Dur-Kurigalzu, near Babylon. A fragment was found at the site of Emporio on the island of Chios, just opposite the Turkish mainland. They have not been found in the northeastern Aegean (Samothrace, Limnos, Lesbos, the Troad) or along the Aegean coast of Anatolia (Panaz Tepe, Liman Tepe, Çesme), and there must be a reason for this.

In almost all cases copper oxhide ingots have been found at coastal sites, clearly implying a distribution via maritime trade. The Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya shipwrecks clearly document such a trade, but a crucial question remains unanswered: how frequently did such voyages take place? It would be nice to be able to answer that question. Clearly we are dealing here with international trade on a grand, probably unprecedented scale.

Zofia Stos regards the Late Bronze Age as representing “the earliest European industrial network” (p. 163). The vast majority of these oxhide ingots do seem to be made of Cypriot copper, even those from Sardinia, an island with its own copper deposits. This use of Cypriot copper started early, at least by the late 16th century BC, as demonstrated by the recent finds from the Cretan site of Mochlos.

Almost all the artifacts from Late Bronze Age sites in the Aegean, on the other hand, seem to be made not of Cypriot copper but of what the Gales have long identified

as copper from Lavrion (southern Attica) or even copper from the Taurus Mountains in southeastern Turkey.

So what happened to all the Cypriot copper? Where did it go? What was it used for? Many attempts have been made to answer these questions, most recently by Stos (pp. 176-77), but as yet, no convincing explanation has been proposed.

The very existence of so-called Lavrion copper has been called into question. Lavrion was, in ancient times, famous as a source of lead and silver. The existence of the Athenian Empire, in the 5th century BC, was based upon the wealth derived from the silver mines of Lavrion. No ancient author ever refers to Lavrion as a source of copper.

Moreover, if large amounts of copper were being smelted from Lavrion ores in the Late Bronze Age, then where are the inevitable heaps of copper-smelting slag? Nothing of the sort has ever been found at Lavrion. In other words, there seems to be a major disconnect between analytical interpretation and archaeological evidence. We now have hundreds of analyzed ingots and hundreds of analyzed artifacts, but the two bodies of evidence seem to exist in separate worlds of reality. No one ever imagined, following some 30 years of very intensive analytical, geological, and archaeological research, that we would find ourselves at such an impasse.

The cargo of the Uluburun ship provides an excellent example of the problems outlined above. The copper ingots seem to be made of Cypriot copper but most of the bronze tools and weapons are said to be made of copper from the Taurus Mountains (Stos, pp. 172-73). Here is a ship carrying a cargo of copper and tin ingots, the raw materials for making bronze, but the bronze artifacts from the wreck were made from an unrelated type of copper. Why? What did the captain of the Uluburun ship plan to do with his metal cargo? Such Cypriot copper, on the basis of present interpretations of the LIA evidence, does not seem to have been used by the metalworkers of Minoan Crete or Mycenaean Greece.

Were the ingots destined to serve as a royal gift, a form of royal gift exchange, but, for some reason, never meant for actual use? Such a proposal seems too bizarre to be taken seriously. The cobalt blue glass ingots seem to have

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to port, carrying their own raw materials and metalworking tools with them in order to supply the local inhabitants who no longer possessed the skills necessary to fulfill their own needs.

The interpretation of the Cape Gelidonya and Uluburun shipwrecks given here is by no means an orthodox one. It is very different from that proposed by George Bass himself, over the past 40 years. It does, I would argue, satisfy both the archaeological and analytical evidence and reflects the growing recognition of the importance of Cyprus in the international world of the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. Everyone who has dealt with the complexities and ambiguities inherent in lead isotope analysis, including Mike Tite and the contributors to From Mine to Microscope, will appreciate that we are still a long way from final statements on almost all the issues that make the scholarship of this period such a challenge. These are exactly the types of problems to which Mike Tite has devoted a long and illustrious career. james d. muhly is Professor Emeritus of Ancient History in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, and former Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. From 1973 to 1978, Professor Muhly was Editor of Expedition.

Professor James D. Muhly

For Further Reading Jackson, C. M., and P. T. Nicholson. “The Provenance of Some Glass Ingots from the Uluburun Shipwreck.” Journal of Archaeological Science 37 (2010): 295-301.

Pusch, Edgar B., and Thilo Rehren. Hochtemperatur-Technologie in der Ramses-Stadt: Rubenglass für den Pharao, Parts 1 and 2. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 2007 (Die Grabungen des PelizaeusMuseums Hildesheim in Qantir–Pi-Ramesse, Vol. 6).

Walton, M. S., et al. “Evidence for the Trade of Mesopotamian and Egyptian Glass to Mycenaean Greece.” Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009): 1496-1503.

Lina Kassianidou

served, at least in part, as raw material for the Mycenaean glass industry. Why not a useful purpose for the copper and tin ingots? The earlier metal hoard from Late Minoan IB Mochlos (ca. 1525–1450 BC) shows the same pattern: ingots of Cypriot copper but artifacts of Lavrion and Taurus copper (Stos, pp. 173, 176). The cargo of the Cape Gelidonya, on the other hand, presents a very different pattern, with both the ingots and the artifacts made of Cypriot copper? Why? What then are we to make of these two remarkable shipwrecks? They are obviously very different in character, and one of the explanations must be found in the difference in date. The Uluburun cargo, ca. 1300 BC, has to be seen within the context of the wealth of Mycenaean Greece in the 14th century BC. This is a merchant ship, most likely of Cypriot origin, on a voyage destined for ports on the Greek mainland, especially the Argolid. I see the Uluburun ship as representing the activities of a rich merchant, probably residing at Enkomi. His business was based upon his ability to supply the wealthy princes of Mycenaean Greece with necessary raw materials, thus making possible their opulent life style.

The ill-fated voyage—that has provided archaeologists with a lifetime of material for research—must have been but one of many. The copper and tin ingots must have served as raw material for the Mycenaean bronze industry, however one is to explain the seemingly contradictory results of LIA. The Cape Gelidonya ship, dating to ca. 1200 BC, contained a crew of itinerant metalworkers. Unlike the Uluburun ship, the Gelidonya ship was carrying a cargo of raw materials, together with a magnificent collection of metalworking tools, all to be put to practical use. With the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces, in the late 13th century BC, the palatial workshops went out of existence. Knowledge of metalworking skills was in serious decline on the Greek mainland, but not in Cyprus. There, metalworking skills continued to flourish during the course of the 12th century BC, as confirmed by such masterpieces of bronze casting as the Horned God and the Ingot God, both from Late Cypriot IIIB Enkomi.

As new markets for metalwork opened up across the eastern Mediterranean, the Cypriot craftsmen seized the initiative. The Gelidonya ship has to be seen within such a context: itinerant Cypriot metalworkers sailing from port

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People, Places, Projects Penn Museum Hosts International Workshop on Digitizing Artifacts and Documentation from Sir Leonard Woolley’s Excavations at Ur Representatives from the Penn, British, and Iraq National museums gathered in Philadelphia on January 26 and 27, 2011, at a workshop made possible by the Leon Levy Foundation, to discuss digitizing the more than 21,000 objects excavated at Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and 30s. The goal of the joint project is to eventually make the entire collection, currently housed among the three museums, available to the public online. A second key project goal is digitization of the documentation of the excavation, including Woolley’s field notes, architectural plans, and reports, which not only tell us what he was excavating at a particular point in time, but also give us insight into his initial interpretation of his discoveries and his evolving understanding of what he was doing.

Iraq’s Ancient Past, the Penn Museum’s long-term exhibition showcasing objects from Ur, will reopen April 30, 2011, on the third floor of the West Wing following renovations and the installation of climate control in the gallery as part of the West Wing Renovation Project.

Penn Museum

Grant from 1956 Otto HaAs Trust Enables Expansion of Museum’s Conservation Program A generous grant from the 1956 Otto Haas Charitable Trust has made possible the expansion of the Penn Museum’s Conservation staff. Nina Owczarek recently joined the Museum’s Conservation Lab as Assistant Conservator. Nina graduated from New York University’s program in Art Conservation in 2005. Since then she has undertaken several project-based contracts with museums in the U.S. as well as one contract in Morocco. Nina worked previously at the Penn Museum from January to November 2009, treating objects for the Painted Metaphors and Iraq’s Ancient Past exhibi-

Front row, left to right: Philippe de Montebello, Special Advisor, Leon Levy Foundation; Judith Dobrzynski, Senior Consultant, Leon Levy Foundation; Donny George, Visiting Professor, SUNY Stony Brook and former General Director, National Museum of Iraq; C. Brian Rose, Deputy Director, Penn Museum; Sarah Collins, Assistant Keeper, Early Mesopotamia Collections, The British Museum; Shelby White, Trustee, Leon Levy Foundation; Ali Khadim Ghanim, Inspector for Ur Province, Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage; John Collins, Keeper of the Middle East Collections, The British Museum. Back row, left to right: Richard Zettler, Associate Curator-in-Charge, Near East Section, Penn Museum; William Hafford, Consulting Scholar, Penn Museum; Stephen Tinney, Associate Curator-in-Charge, Babylonian Section, Penn Museum; Alessandro Pezzati, Senior Archivist, Penn Museum; John Bernstein, President and CFO, Leon Levy Foundation; Richard Hodges, Williams Director, Penn Museum; Abdulamir Hamdani, doctoral candidate, SUNY Stony Brook, former Director of Antiquities, Dhiqar Province, Iraq.

tions. Nina’s arrival marks the beginning of the Conservation Department’s planned expansion. In the fall of 2011, two interns will join the Conservation staff to spend an academic year getting practical experience in a museum setting. These internships are the latest installment of the Department’s distinguished history in conservation education. Conservation’s expansion will enable the Museum to better fulfill our strategic goal of being a world-class museum that stewards and exhibits its collections to contemporary international museological standards.

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New Archaeological Ceramics Lab Opens A new ceramics laboratory opened in January 2011, funded by Dr. Charles K. Williams II as part of the Penn Museum’s West Wing Renovation Project. This lab launches the Museum’s commitment to a new suite of conservation and archaeological laboratories. The ceramics lab will support the University of Pennsylvania’s archaeological curricula as well as research programs of in-house and visiting archaeologists. The catalyst for the creation of the ceramics lab was the Ban Chiang Project’s Year of Ceramics, part of a four-year Luce Foundation grant to the Penn Museum to strengthen collaborative archaeological research in Southeast Asia. During the Spring 2011 semester, the lab is being used for a Penn seminar course, Introduction to Archaeological Ceramics, co-taught by Dr. Marie-Claude Boileau (visiting post-doctoral scholar, Penn Museum), Dr.

Tom Tartaron (Assistant Professor, Classical Studies), and Dr. Joyce White (Director, Ban Chiang Project, and Associate Curator for Asia). Penn graduate students were the first to use the lab to perform petrographic and other archaeometric analyses on Ban Chiang pottery. Petrography is a core analytical technique whereby the minerals in thin sections of pottery vessels can be optically identified using a polarizing microscope. This kind of sophisticated study assists archaeologists in determining manufacturing processes as well as trade patterns of ancient societies.

Concurrently, the lab is supporting the special study of Ban Chiang ceramics on loan from the Thai government since the Museum’s excavations in the 1970s and the analysis of Middle Bronze Age pottery from the sites of Kirrha and Orchomenos, Greece, by Dr. Tom Tartaron and Dr. Marie-Claude Boileau.

Dr. Marie-Claude Boileau (left) and student Griselle Rodriguez-Gonzalez examining ceramic thin sections using the ceramic lab’s new polarizing microscope. Dr. Boileau is team leader for the study of Ban Chiang archaeological ceramics during the Year of Ceramics.

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Thanks to leadership support from A. Bruce and Margaret Mainwaring and Dr. Charles K. Williams II, and with generous additional support from Barbara and Michael J. Kowalski, the Frederick J. Manning Family, Diane von Schlegell Levy and Robert M. Levy, and the 1956 Otto Haas Charitable Trust, the three exhibitions currently or soon to be on display in the Museum’s West Wing—Secrets of the Silk Road, Battleground: War Rugs from Afghanistan, and Iraq’s Ancient Past—will open in newly refurbished and climate-controlled galleries. The first phase of the West Wing Renovation Project also included the creation of a teaching laboratory for ceramic petrography. Later phases will add a state-of-the-art suite of conservation labs and workspaces, several additional teaching and research labs, and the restoration of the historic and architecturally unique Widener Lecture Hall, which will return to its original function as an academic or public event space after several decades of use as a behind-the-scenes preparation area for exhibitions.

The addition of climate control throughout the wing, together with replacement of the windows with historically accurate but airtight and energy-efficient versions, will significantly enhance the Penn Museum visitor experience and provide greater protection and stability for the artifacts on display.

Be th Va n Ho rn

Exhibitions Open in Renovated and Climate-Controlled Galleries Thanks to West Wing Renovation Project

museum mosaic The West Wing Renovation Project is designed by Samuel Anderson Architects of New York City, noted for their work in museums and libraries, with a specialty in conservation labs, with general contract management by Hunter Roberts Construction Group; mechanical design by McClure Engineering of St. Louis, MO; structural engineering by Severud Associates of New York City; lighting design by Jeffrey Nash Lighting Design of New York City; and project management by the University of Pennsylvania’s Facilities and Real Estate Services.

Ma ry Wh ee le r

Generous Underwriters Support Secrets of the Silk Road and Related Programming When Secrets of the Silk Road opened at the Penn Museum in February 2011, it was thanks to the hard work of an enormous number of people and generous support from a wide range of individuals, corporations, educational centers, foundations, and media sponsors. Penn Museum gratefully acknowledges exhibition support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; A. Bruce and Margaret Mainwaring; Lois and Robert M. Baylis; the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the Selz Foundation; Cummins Catherwood, Jr. and Susan W. Catherwood; Alexandra and Eric J. Schoenberg, Ph.D.; Tiffany & Co.; Winnie Chin and Michael Feng; Gretchen R. Hall, Ph.D.; Host Hotels and Resorts; and Titan. Media partnership support was provided by NBC 10 and the Philadelphia Inquirer/philly.com. Penn Museum extends thanks also to Annette Merle-Smith for underwriting educational materials associated with Secrets of the Silk Road, and to PNC Foundation, Subaru of America, and the Wachovia-Wells Fargo Foundation for supporting the “Sponsor a School Group” program and making it possible for more than 600 inner city public school children to see Secrets of the Silk Road and experience related educational programming free of charge. The international symposium “Reconfiguring the Silk Road: New Research on EastWest Exchange in Antiquity,” held at the Penn Museum on March 19, 2011, was made possible by generous underwriting from the Henry Luce Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ancient Studies.

Voices from Indian Country With support from the Annenberg Foundation, the Penn Museum is developing a new exhibition entitled Native American Voices. In preparation, exhibition curator Lucy Fowler Williams is working together with a host of native specialists from across the country to identify important issues in Indian country today and to relate these to the Museum’s outstanding collections from this diverse region. She is working particularly closely with Hopi journalist Patty Talahongva and her Phoenix-based film crew to record video interviews with native artists, scholars, and activists. The team has worked in New Mexico, Alaska, and Washington, D.C.

Native American Voices exhibition curator Lucy Fowler Williams and film crew with Tlingit wood carver Tommy Joseph (center), at Sitka, Alaska’s National Historical Totem Pole Park. The Park was established in 1904 to remember the 1804 Battle of Sitka, a major armed resistance by the Tlingit people to Russian colonization. Joseph carved the pole in the background, which was raised in 2004 to honor the Tlingit Kiks.ádi clan and celebrate the battle’s 200th anniversary.

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museum mosaic Philadelphia University, the University of Sciences, the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and as far as away as Bucknell University came to experience the festivities and make friends from around the world.

Cartifacts: Informal Learning in the Penn Museum’s Galleries

Annual Welcoming Reception at the Penn Museum The 41st Welcoming Reception for International Students and Scholars hosted by the Penn Museum’s International Classroom program was an astounding success, attended by more than 1,200 international guests from 104 countries as far flung as Moldova, Tanzania, Uruguay, and Senegal.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter, Penn Museum’s Williams Director Richard Hodges, and several officials from consulates in Philadelphia and New York took part in the event. The reception included the volunteer efforts of 30 students from the Philadelphia High School for Girls, dance performances by Penn and LaSalle students, and the generous donation of refreshments from program volunteers and supporters Josephine Klein and Nada Miller. The goals of the Reception are to welcome international students and scholars to the Philadelphia area and help them network by bringing together 65 colleges, universities, and international programs, as well as hundreds of volunteers, performers, museum staff, and city and state officials. The Reception is considered a national model among international educators and is the only city-wide event of its kind. Students from the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Widener University,

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The Cartifact experience is now available in Museum galleries from 12 to 3 pm every day.

Pe nn M us eum

Mayor Michael A. Nutter (second from right) with Williams Director Richard Hodges (right), and Penn Museum Program Manager of Outreach Prema Deshmukh (in sari), with international guests.

Touch, ask, explore: these are the main goals of the Community Engagement Department’s newest educational initiative, Cartifacts.

Cartifacts is an in-gallery, hands-on experience for all Penn Museum visitors. Each day from 12 pm to 3 pm, one or more carts are offered in the Museum’s galleries. Current topics include “Daily Life in Ancient Rome,” “Mummification in Ancient Egypt,” and “Textiles.” Trained facilitators engage visitors in conversation related to a cart’s theme and its accompanying objects. All objects can be handled by visitors who can experience writing with a wax tablet and stylus, opening a canopic jar to find a facsimile of a corresponding organ inside, making thread with a drop spindle, and much more. During the Secrets of the Silk Road exhibition, Cartifacts is tailored to show connections between the Silk Road and the Museum’s long-term galleries. Stop by the Penn Museum to try them out for yourself!

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UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM PUBLICATIONS ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE IN WESTERN CENTRAL ASIA An Environmental-Archaeological Study David R. Harris Archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the ´ Neolithic period. It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British, Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge of the Karakum desert.

2010 | 328 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 | 102 illus. | Cloth | $65.00

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