Wednesday, April 9th, 2014
* AIA Kress Lecture *
"They Died With Their Boots On: The Roman Hobnail
Burials at Gordion (Turkey)"
Andrew Goldman, Gonzaga University
Where: Buffalo History Museum
When: Wednesday April 9th
at 6:30 p.m.
Directions: http://www.buffalohistory.org/
Co-Sponsored by IEM
Abstract:
Burial practices tend to vary widely between disparate
cultures, and this is perhaps nowhere more evident than at the site of Gordion,
located in central Turkey approximately 95 km. southwest of modern Ankara.
Situated at the confluence of two rivers and at the nexus of several ancient
trade routes, Gordion was occupied almost continuously from the Early Bronze
Age to Medieval times. Among the wide variety of burial types are Hittite
pithos burials, the great tumuli of the Phrygian kings and nobles, simple
Lydian and Persian inhumations, Hellenistic chamber tombs, wooden coffins of
the Roman period, and Byzantine cist graves. Three Roman cemeteries were
excavated at the site between 1950 and 1994, and the objects and skeletal
remains recovered from these necropoleis have helped to shape our understanding
of Roman life at this rural town. Perhaps the most enigmatic of all the burial
types are those containing the remains of hobnail boots, found in nearly a
third of the total Roman period graves currently known. This burial type,
dating from the 1st to 3rd century A.D. and common to sites along the Rhine and
Danube frontiers, are unattested elsewhere in Anatolia. Their appearance at
Gordion, in the graves of men, women and children, represents an intriguing
phenomenon. Such boots have often been found at military sites, a fact which
led the original excavators to hypothesize that either veterans or soldiers
lived at Gordion during the Roman Empire. New excavations at the site in 2004
and 2005 have now settled this issue: the discovery of Roman weapons, armor and
a barracks building have provided conclusive evidence that soldiers inhabited
this small settlement. Indeed, as the chance discovery in 1997 of a Roman
auxiliary soldier’s tombstone has shown, at least some of these men never made
it home alive from their post on the Anatolian plateau, dying with their boots
on.
Suggested Bibliography/Websites
“Roman Military Occupation at Yass?höyük (Gordion), Ankara
Province, Turkey”. With J. Bennett. Antiquity 81, Issue 314 (forthcoming December
2007). “The Roman-period Cemeteries at Gordion in Galatia”. Journal of Roman
Archaeology 20 (2007) 299-320. “From Phrygian Capital to Rural Fort: New
Evidence for the Roman Military at Gordion, Turkey”. Expedition 49.3 (Winter
2007) 6-12. “Reconstructing the Roman-period Town at Gordion,” Chap. 5 in Lisa.
K. Kealhofer (ed.), The Archaeology of Midas and the Phrygians: Recent Work at
Gordion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum Press, 2005).
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