The Tenth Campaign at Sardis (1967)

The Story of a Forgotten Kingdom? Survey Archaeology and the Historical Geography of Central Western Anatolia in the Second Millenniumbc

“…Previous work in the area had focused primarily on Iron Age and later periods, especially in Bin Tepe, or the ‘Thousand Mounds’—a 72 km 2 tumulus cemetery commonly identified as the royal cemetery of Lydian kings at Sardis, located some 10 km to the south (Roosevelt, 2007, 2009; Luke & Roosevelt, 2016). A few intermittent investigations had also located traces of Bronze Age remains dating to the third and second millennia bc (Hanfmann, 1968; Mitten & Yüğrüm, 1971, 1974; Zimmerman et al, 2003). The interrelation between these sites, the presence of other sites, and the cultural systems they reflected were all but unexplored aside from preliminary presentations of material typologies intended primarily to assess chronology.…”

“…A cemetery identified by members of the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis during their work in Bin Tepe in the late 1960s can be added to this small group of settlements. Discovered at a place called Boyalı Tepe and unfortunately not relocated recently, this cemetery consisted of graves within large jars, or pithoi, many fragments of which were collected and tentatively dated to the Middle Bronze Age (Hanfmann, 1968: 10).…”