expedition volume 53, number 1 spring 2011

AFGHAN WAR RUGS

A CONSERVATION PROGRAM AT GORDION

IN SEARCH OF SAN PIETRO D’ASSO

ARCHAEOLOGY AND SHIPWRECKS

®

SPRING 2011VOLUME 53 , NUMBER 1

THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

WWW.PENN.MUSEUM/EXPEDITION

Expedition

www.museum.upenn.edu/expedition 1

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We welcome letters to the Editor.Please send them to: ExpeditionPenn Museum 3260 South StreetPhiladelphia, PA 19104-6324 Email: [email protected]

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features

AFGHAN WARS, ORIENTAL CARPETS, AND GLOBALIZATION

By Brian Spooner

RESURRECTING GORDION: PRESERVING TURKEY’S PHRYGIAN CAPITAL

By Frank G. Matero and C. Brian Rose

IN SEARCH OF SAN PIETRO D’ASSO

By Stefano Campana, Michelle Hobart, Richard Hodges, Adrianna de Svastich, and Jennifer McAuley

ARCHAEOMETRY AND SHIPWRECKS: A REVIEW ARTICLE

From Mine to Microscope: Advances in the Study of Ancient TechnologyBy James D. Muhly

departments

From the Editor

From the Director

From the Archives—Jim Thompson, the Thai Silk King

What in the World—Telmu and Petrui: A Rediscovered Romance?

From the Field—Guerilla Fashion: Textiles in Motion Push Change in Indian Art

Museum Mosaic—People, Places, Projects

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.

contentsspring 2011

V O L U M E 5 3 , N U M B E R 1

Expedition® (ISSN 0014-4738) is published three times a year by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-6324. ©2011 University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Expedition is a registered trademark of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. All editorial inquiries should be addressed to the Editor at the above address or by email to [email protected]. Subscription price: $35.00 per subscription per year. International subscribers: add $15.00 per subscription per year. Subscription, back issue, and advertising queries to Maureen Goldsmith at [email protected] or (215)898-4050. Subscription forms may be faxed to (215)573-9369. Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery.

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2 volume 53 , number 1 expedition

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.

design

Anne Marie KaneImogen Designwww.imogendesign.com

printing

C&B Graphicswww.cnbgraphics.com

Over 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 con-

flict. 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 asso-

ciated 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 sea-

son, 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.

jane hickman, ph.d.Editor

welcome

From the Editor

FPO

www.penn.museum/expedition 3

Penn museum has long had

a part in revealing Afghan

archaeological history. In

1953, at Director Froelich

Rainey’s instigation, Rodney

Young, Curator of the Mediterranean

Section and Director of the Gordion exca-

vations, 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

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 writ-

ten 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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by richard

hodges

from the director

Froelich Rainey (on camelback) in Afghanistan, 1952. UPM Image # 48652

Penn Museum and Afghanistan


from the archives

Younger generations may

not know Jim Thompson

(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 politi-

cal 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.

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 peo-

ple 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 celeb-

rities 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.

by alessandro

pezzati

Buddhist priests blessed Jim Thompson’s Thai house in Bangkok, 1959. UPM Image # 194079.

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Jim Thompson, the Thai Silk King

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Jim 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.

Jim Thompson with his frequent companion, Cockatoo. UPM Image # 194077.

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


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In 1955, Thompson met Elizabeth Lyons, an art historian

from Michigan who had studied at Columbia University,

with stints in Paris and Brussels. At the time of their meet-

ing, Lyons had been appointed cultural attaché at the U.S.

State Department, touring an exhibition of modern American

Art around South and Southeast Asia and acting as a cultural

ambassador in the region. When she originally applied for the

job, she had not been considered a serious candidate, since the

State Department wanted a man. But as no men applied, it was

she who was selected.

Lisa Lyons and Jim Thompson became fast friends, and

were also briefly lovers. They shared an intense interest in the

art of Southeast Asia. Lyons planned to write a monograph

on Thai painting, as she continued to lecture for the State

Department in the ensuing years. She also curated exhibitions,

worked on an archaeological survey of Thailand, and assisted

with the opening of the new National Museum in Bangkok

in 1967, as well as in planning provincial museums. It was in

part through the efforts of Thompson and Lyons that art from

Southeast Asia is much more highly prized today.

In 1967, Thompson disappeared

suddenly while visiting friends in the

Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, a

mountainous region covered by intrac-

table 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

Chiang brought Lyons to the Penn

Museum as Assistant Curator of the

Asian Section in 1968, a year after Thompson’s disappear-

ance. She then spent five years (1971–1975) administering the

Ford Foundation program in Southeast Asian art and archae-

ology. She later returned to the Penn Museum as Keeper

of the Asian Section Collections in 1976. She co-curated

the Buddhism exhibition as it appears today and eventually

donated her own collection, which included some pieces

given to her by Thompson, to the Museum. Her papers,

including her unfinished monograph on Thai painting, a

stash of letters from Thompson, and a number of reminis-

cences from her Thailand days, are now available in the Penn

Museum Archives.

In his letters to Lyons, Thompson writes most of all about

traveling around Thailand to collect antiquities and the prob-

lems arising from the building of his grand house. Though the

disappearance of the “Thai Silk King” remains shrouded in

mystery, these records reveal something about his passion for

Southeast Asian art and the history of his collections.

alessandro pezzati is the Senior Archivist at the Museum.

Elizabeth (Lisa) Lyons appeared on Japanese television to discuss Asian art, 1956. UPM Image # 194047.

Some rare evidence for social

change in ancient Etruria

reposes in the Penn Museum’s

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 inscrip-

tions 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 invest-

ment to sustain himself and his future family. In Roman law

(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.

Em

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(map

), P

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what in the world

by jean

macintosh

turfa

Telmu and Petrui: A Rediscovered Romance?


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 let-

ter “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 com-

moner 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 chil-

dren who buried them—were literate, thus a cut above the

ordinary. So we may assume that Telmu and Petrui had suc-

ceeded 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 min-

eralized 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 fam-

ily 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.

jean macintosh 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.

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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Patricia michaels is not

new to fashion, but she

is new to Santa Fe’s cele-

brated Southwest Indian

Art Market, a proving

ground for Native American artists,

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.

Michaels is from Taos Pueblo, a Native American com-

munity 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 anniver-

sary 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:

At Taos, the way we live allows us to see that the envi-ronment is always changing, and we are always adapt-ing 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:

from the field

textiles in motion

push change in

indian art

by lucy fowler

williams

Guerilla Fashion

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


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 back-ground. 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.

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

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 embod-

ies a fundamental Pueblo cultural theme of movement. For hun-

dreds 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 fash-

ion designer Dorothy Grant.

lucy fowler williams is the Jeremy A. Sabloff Keeper of American Collections at the Penn Museum. A specialist in tex-tiles, 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.

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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.

Afghan Wars, Oriental Carpets, and Globalizationby brian spooner

The afghan war rugs on

exhibit at the Penn Museum

from April 30 to July 31, 2011,

raise a number of interest-

ing questions—about carpets,

Afghanistan, and the way the world as a whole

is changing. These rugs, which come in a vari-

ety of sizes and qualities, derive from a tradi-

tion 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 seri-

ous 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 connoisseur-

ship, which led the international trade. As the


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a 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).

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 war-

related icons: soldiers (Soviet, American, Afghan), AK-47s, heli-

copter 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.

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 follow-

ing 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.

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

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Afghanistan’s War Experience

Afghanistan 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 accelerat-ing 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 continu-ing 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).


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 peo-

ple in medieval Europe ate at tables rather than on the floor,

they used the carpets as tablecloths (as shown in the paint-

ings), 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, how-

ever, 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 geo-

graphical differences in the fibers used. This craft has pros-

pered in a variety of social settings, including isolated com-

munities of pastoral nomads, small village oases, agricultural

communities in the hinterland of urban market centers, and

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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).

urban workshops. Central Asian carpet production ben-

efited 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 Philadel-

phia Museum of Art—as well as humble prayer rugs with geo-

metrical 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 symbol-

ize 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 pro-

vide 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, prov-

enance, the quality of materials (including dyes and col-

ors), the design, the “handle” (feel or pliability), condition,


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How to Make A Rug

We 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 origi-nate 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.

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

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 perco-

lated 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 com-

munities 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 car-

pets became a standard stock item in

Western department stores. Rug con-

noisseurship 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 con-

noisseurship 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 rela-

tionship 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 vari-

ous parts of the country: from Taimani Baloch in Farah prov-

ince 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 pro-

portion 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

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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).


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 car-

pets of the past. Some saw them as protest art, some as

tourist art. How else could we explain the sudden replace-

ment 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.

Even though Afghan war rugs did not please connoisseurs,

they gradually began to attract attention among a new audi-

ence 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, glo-

balization 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 hand-

made 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 experi-

ence with war. Their reaction to that experience has changed

as they have been caught up more and more in the interna-

tional 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 long-

distance trade, the textile industry led the industrial revolu-

tion, and more recently the rise of multi-nationals. Now tex-

tiles are changing the way ordinary Afghans interact with the

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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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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).

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 entrepre-

neurship 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 pro-

vided a window onto the material culture of the world beyond

our experience.

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 technolo-gies. Dr. Spooner curated a 1973 exhibition of Afghan carpets at the Penn Museum.

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.

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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).


Resurrecting GordionPreserving Turkey’s Phrygian Capitalby frank g. matero and c. brian rose

Archaeology and heritage conservation

have become important partners in the exca-

vation, preservation, and display of archaeo-

logical sites around the world. With rare

exception, most archaeological sites are cre-

ated 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 man-

aging deterioration (as a result of exposure) and interpreting

buildings, features, and site histories. Input from the archae-

ologist, 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 mean-

ing 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 asso-

ciations with King Midas and Alexander the Great, will safe-

guard the extensive yet rapidly deteriorating remains of this

great citadel and transform it into a vibrant component of the

region’s economy and identity.

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 millen-

nium 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

the Near East. The

city became especially

prominent shortly

after the Phrygians

settled there in the

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 cen-

tury 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 occu-

pation levels spanning a period of nearly 3,000 years. The

Early Phrygian (ca. 950–800 BCE) palaces and public build-

ings 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.

Em

ily T

oner

TURKEY

Gordion is located in central Turkey.


Famous Rulers at Gordion

As 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 subse-quently enshrined within the citadel as an object of reverence.

So much for the legend; but Midas was actually an historical char-acter 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 non-Greek 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 nev-ertheless 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 who-ever 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 force-ful action still remains as a common expression in English, wherein “cutting the Gordian knot” refers to decisively solving a seemingly intractable problem.

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 legend-

ary 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 destruc-

tion. In 2006 a new program of site conserva-

tion 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 conserva-

tion, 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 implementa-

tion represent Penn Museum’s renewed com-

mitment 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 con-

servation, regional survey, and heritage training.


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Labo

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otto

m)

Gordion’s ancient citadel mound is a dis-

tinctive presence on the central Anatolian

horizon, representing three millennia of

human occupation. The mass and contour

of its constructed form, together with associ-

ated 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 stabi-

lize erosion as backfill for eroded excavation

scarps and trenches will do much to rein-

state Gordion’s largest and most character-

istic feature. Also critical to the stabilization

A

B C

D

E

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.

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

Arc

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onse

rvat

ion

Labo

rato

ry


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, fortifica-

tion walls, enclosed and open spaces, and paved

areas of Gordion are readily discernible and

understood. Gordion possessed all these fea-

tures 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, sta-

bilization, restoration, and partial reconstruc-

tion—have been implemented simultaneously.

Architectural form and building fabric are cur-

rently being interpreted according to a set of

guidelines that carefully mediate between the

reestablishment of the overall plan and the pres-

ervation 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 exte-

rior spaces. Although years of prolonged expo-

sure degraded these materials (mudbrick) and

construction techniques (rubble-core masonry

walls), some features such as the stone pave-

ments and megaron walls (see below) were sub-

sequently reburied for protection. Currently,

various presentation techniques are under

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

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Labo

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ttom

)


development to reveal and display walls and

pavements by excavation, capping, encapsula-

tion, and replication. Each of these techniques

will be tested, and their application to a particu-

lar building or area will depend on the archaeo-

logical 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 barri-

ers. 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 cor-

responding signage describing relevant build-

ings, features, and history.

The recent building and site condition

survey has identified the potential for seri-

ous deterioration and structural collapse of a

number of important structures, including the

Early Phrygian gate, the Middle Phrygian walls,

the Terrace Building, and numerous mega-

rons. These and other buildings and archi-

tectural 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.

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

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.

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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.

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a serious safety issue to the excavators and the visiting pub-

lic 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 moni-

tored for movement while test stabilization methods are mod-

eled. 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.

The WallsThe Early and Middle Phrygian stone walls are a critical com-

ponent 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 dif-

ferent 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 BuildingThe 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-

plete in plan, require extensive stabilization using an innova-

tive 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 produc-

tion sector of the Early Phrygian citadel.

The MegaronsThe principal megarons flanking the Terrace Building plat-

form 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 sig-

nificance 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 ben-

efited from the involvement of numerous academic institu-

tions. More recently, site conservation has benefited from the

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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.

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Work Continues at Gordion

A 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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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.

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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 conser-

vation program accelerates, and in time, Gordion will consti-

tute 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 its environs is being developed by an interdisciplinary ¸


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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 ethno-

graphic 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.

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

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

The via cassia was one of the main arteries con-

necting 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 cen-

tury, 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


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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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 cen-

tury 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 settle-

ment. 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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This silver coin was found near the hilltop. It was minted by Conrad II, founder of the Germanic Salian Dynasty (1027–1039).

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

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mClockwise, 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.

where were the potsherds belonging to later phases of settle-

ments, 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 sev-

eral 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 cen-

tury Lombard King Aripert, was most definitely not located

on the hilltop.

the farmhouse church

Occupying a terrace immediately below the hilltop, over-

looking 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 con-

struction, 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 uncov-

ered four shallow graves. From unstratified levels in this

area came an early medieval copper alloy tag, lending plau-

sible 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 cha-

pel 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 evi-

dent. 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 founda-

tion. 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 neigh-

bor, 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 estab-

lishing 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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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.

Our 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 coun-

tryside 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 pri-

vacy, 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 dig-

ging. We spent each day at San Pietro d’Asso hard at work;

A Month in Montalcinoby adrianna de svastich and jennifer mcauley


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

the group was divided between the medieval church

and the hilltop, where we unearthed a monastic

watchtower from the same period. Following a deli-

cious 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 tradi-

tional 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 mcau-ley 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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Left top, Dr. Michelle Hobart shows student Adena Wayne how to piece together pottery sherds. Left bot-tom, students of the Penn archaeology field school gath-er for a group photograph at the abbey of Sant’Antimo, Montalcino, Siena.

Jennifer McAuley and Adrianna de Svastich.

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The volume from mine to microscope rep-

resents 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 cen-

tury. 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 lead-

ing journal in the field of archaeological science. It is not pos-

sible 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.

Tite’s early interest in thermoluminescence dating (TL)

soon led to a long-standing interest in the use of the scan-

ning electron microscope (SEM), involving work with Yannis

Maniatis, one of his former students. Maniatis went on to

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.

Mike Tite doing fieldwork in the Western Desert of Egypt.

Archaeometry and ShipwrecksA Review Article by james d. muhly

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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 atten-

tion to the crucial role played by the

Penn Museum (then the University Museum) in the devel-

opment 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 dat-

ing, 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

Ralph as Associate Director of MASCA (1961–1982)—includ-

ing 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 labo-

ratory she subsequently established at the University Museum

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

was the first one in the world devoted to the radiomet-

ric dating of archaeological materials. Two factors were

important in making all this possible: a crucial grant

from the National Science Foundation and the sup-

port 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 dendrochro-

nology. 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 tech-

nological 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, accord-

ing 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 technologi-

cal explanation for these differences. In Mesopotamia

and Syria both glass and glazed ceramics were made

of alkali-fluxed materials, whereas when Egypt finally


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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

started to glaze ceramics, it made use of a lead-based technol-

ogy (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 Qantir-

Piramesses, of the only known Bronze Age primary glass pro-

duction 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 intro-

duces 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.

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 begin-

ning 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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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.

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 archaeologi-

cal 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.

These are the conclusions of Zofia A.

Stos. There is no doubt that her contribu-

tion 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 semi-

nal essay by our honoree (“In defence

of lead isotope analysis,” Antiquity 70

[1996]: 959-62). It is the LIA of the cop-

per ingots from both shipwrecks that

has propelled the study of the Gelidonya

and Uluburun shipwrecks into the fore-

front of current research in Bronze Age

Mediterranean archaeology.

When George Bass put out his final

publication of the Cape Gelidonya ship-

wreck, 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 fol-

lowing 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 cop-

per mines on the island of Cyprus, a country long famous as

a source of copper for the ancient world. No one really knows

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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

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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

T hanks to a recent paper by N. H. Gale, M. Kayafa, and Z. A. Stos-Gale, it has now become necessary to re-evaluate 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 archaeo-logical 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.


Noë

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Zofia

A. S

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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.

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 contro-

versial. 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 frag-

ment 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 interna-

tional 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 cop-

per 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 cop-

per 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, follow-

ing 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 cop-

per 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



Lina

Kas

sian

idou

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 ship-

wrecks? 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 main-

land, especially the Argolid. I see the Uluburun ship as rep-

resenting the activities of a rich merchant, probably residing

at Enkomi. His business was based upon his ability to sup-

ply 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, con-

tained 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 met-

alworking tools, all to be put to practical use. With the col-

lapse 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

to port, carrying their own raw materials and metalwork-

ing 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 grow-

ing recognition of the importance of Cyprus in the interna-

tional 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 state-

ments 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 illustri-

ous 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.

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 Pelizaeus-Museums 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.

Professor James D. Muhly


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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 exhibi-

tion 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.

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-

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 dis-

tinguished history in conservation education. Conservation’s

expansion will enable the Museum to better fulfill our stra-

tegic goal of being a world-class museum that stewards and

exhibits its collections to contemporary international museo-

logical standards.

museum mosaic

People, Places, Projects

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.

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 archaeologi-

cal 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 analyti-

cal technique whereby the minerals in thin sections of pottery

vessels can be optically identified using a polarizing micro-

scope. This kind of sophisticated study assists archaeologists

in determining manufacturing processes as well as trade pat-

terns 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.

ExHIBITIONS OPEN IN RENOVATED AND CLIMATE-CONTROLLED GALLERIES THANKS TO WEST WING RENOVATION PROJECT

Thanks to leadership support from A. Bruce and Margaret

Mainwaring and Dr. Charles K. Williams II, and with gener-

ous 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 func-

tion 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 pro-

tection and stability for the artifacts on display.


museum mosaic

Be

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ornDr. 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.


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 conser-

vation 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.

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 enor-

mous number of people and generous support from a wide

range of individuals, corporations, educational centers,

foundations, and media sponsors. Penn Museum grate-

fully 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 underwrit-

ing 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 sympo-

sium “Reconfiguring the Silk Road: New Research on East-

West Exchange in Antiquity,” held at the Penn Museum on

March 19, 2011, was made possible by generous underwrit-

ing 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 spe-

cialists from across the country to identify important issues in

Indian country today and to relate these to the Museum’s out-

standing 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.

museum mosaic

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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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 gener-

ous donation of refreshments from program volunteers and

supporters Josephine Klein and Nada Miller. The goals of the

Reception are to welcome international students and schol-

ars to the Philadelphia area and help them network by bring-

ing together 65 colleges, universities, and international pro-

grams, 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,

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

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 accom-

panying 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!

museum mosaic

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.

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

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´

call toll free: 1-800-537-5487www.penn.museum

ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE IN WESTERN CENTRAL ASIAAn Environmental-Archaeological StudyDavid 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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.a.

expedition volume 53, number 1 spring 2011

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