On Site At Sardis

Ismail Mardin reports back after spending time with Professor Nicholas Cahill and his team who are using both traditional and cutting-edge scientific methods to explore and analyse the site of the Lydian capital in Turkey and the many diverse finds unearthed there.

Situated about 100km east of present-day Izmir, 70km inland from the Aegean Sea, Sardis was the capital of the Lydian Empire, the seat of the fabled King Croesus, and the place where coinage was first invented and used. During the 7th and 6th centuries BC, Lydian strength was based largely on their control of the gold-mines of western Anatolia, their mastery of accurately and predictably controlling the composition of gold, and the related invention of coinage. These skills enabled them to become the most powerful empire in the region. But 1000 years later, the lower city of Sardis was all but abandoned, and the city turned from a metropolis into a fortified citadel.

Excavations at Sardis have been carried out by Harvard and Cornell Universities since 1958. Today they are directed by Professor Nicholas Cahill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His archaeological team – with members from Asia, Europe and America – combines a resident faculty of specialists with a set of visiting and attached fellows, using the latest technology as well as traditional archaeological methods, to explore, analyse and conserve finds.

The site sits where a vast and fertile agricultural plain begins to give way to rapidly rising wooded hills leading up to the Anatolian highlands. The citadel is perched in a very strong defensive position on a cliff overlooking the plains. The site covers a wide area that includes an ancient necropolis of some 74sqkm, known as Bin Tepe (Turkish for ‘a thousand mounds’), where more than 100 burial tumuli are clearly visible.