LATE CLASSICAL AND HELLENISTIC POTTERY FROM GORDION: THE IMPORTED BLACK GLAZED WARES (ANATOLIA, GREEK, TURKEY; CERAMICS)

A presentation of the black glazed pottery that was imported to Gordion in Turkey (ancient Phrygia, subsequently Galatia) from the fourth century B.C. until 189 B.C. Although Gordion had an active ceramic industry, no pottery of this type was produced at the site, and thus the black glazed ware, which was produced extensively throughout the Hellenic world, serves as a useful indicator of Gordion's foreign mercantile relationships during late Classical and Hellenistic times.; A review of Gordion's occupational history (chapter I) provides a chronological framework for the consideration of the pottery (chapters II and III). By the beginning of the fourth century B.C., the last monumental city at Gordion had been severely damaged by an earthquake and partially dismantled. Its buildings were replaced by the domestic structures of a small, but not entirely impecunious village, that was occupied when Alexander the Great visited Gordion in 333 B.C. and that survived until ca. 275 B.C., when the migration of European Celtic tribes into the territory around Gordion led to the site's abandonment. Gordion was reoccupied after ca. 241/0 B.C., the year when Attalus I of Pergamon defeated the Celts in two major battles fought in western Asia Minor. The site was again abandoned in 189 B.C., when Roman armies led by Gn. Manlius Vlso advanced on the settlement as part of a large-scale campaign against the Celts in Phrygia/Galatia. Gordion was not reoccupied until Roman Imperial times.; The black glazed pottery imported to Godion's two post-monumental settlements consists mainly of open vessels in shapes that could readily be stacked and protected for overland shipment. Exporting centers from the islands of the eastern Aegean and the west coast of Asia Minor are the ones best represented among Gordion's imports. Products from more distant centers, in Thrace, at Athens and at Tarsus, are also present. Analysis of the imports suggests that they were being used as luxury items by a non-Greek, native Phrygian and immigrant Celtic population that superficially at least was emulating Hellenic culture.