HELLENIZATION AND THE MEETING OF PEOPLES. In 333 BC, Alexander the Great arrived at Gordion and incorporated the area into his emerging empire. In the Early Hellenistic (YHSS 3B) ceramic assemblage, “the adoption of Greek forms becomes even more pervasive, affecting even basic types like cooking pots” (Henrickson 1993:155). Around 250 BC, finds, both spectacular and quotidian, confirm the Celtic (Galatian) occupation at Gordion attested by ancient texts (Dandoy et al. 2002; Voigt 2003).
MEDIEVAL (YHSS 1). During the Medieval period new cultural interactions might have had some affect on land use. In the case of Gordion, there is enough pig bone to suggest the presence of a resident non-Muslim population. We might expect that the influx of Central Asian Turkic tribes and political unification of new regions under Islam to have influenced trade networks and the material, including plants, that traveled along the routes.
Archaeobotanical Questions
The previous sections give some general archaeological and cultural background. Samples from the stratigraphic excavation contain a record of close to 2000 years. Data from plant macroremains, charred wood, seeds, and other plant parts can address a number of issues concerning ancient plant use, land use, and landscape. The long sequence allows us to trace vegetation history in the region and evaluate the extent and nature of human impact. Charred wood indirectly provides evidence of forest composition, and the remains themselves come from fuel and construction. From the seeds of cultigens and wild plants we can infer the relative importance of agriculture and pastoralism over time. Somewhat more directly, the charred remains leave evidence of crop choice. The intensity of land use for agricultural and pastoral pursuits would have varied, too. In conjunction with the other archaeological interpretations, the botanical data can enrich our understanding of agriculture and economy in the Sakarya valley.
Original Vegetation, Climate, and Changes in Land Use Intensity
Even today, and certainly in antiquity, climate is one of the major determinants of vegetation. For central Anatolia, Aytuğ (1970) proposes a landscape of anthropogenic steppe, certainly around Ankara but even around Gordion. As Walter points out, “Die Grenze zwischen Wald und Steppe wird in Zentralanatolien noch dadurch kompliziert, daß dieses Land keine Hochebene im eigentlichen Sinne darstellt. Vielmehr wechseln weite Beckenlandschaften (als ‘ova’ bezeichnet) mit Gebirgsrücken ab. Auf den höheren Erhebungen findet man noch Waldreste, während die tiefer liegenden Teile baumlos sind” (1956:97). [The boundary between forest and steppe in central Anatolia is complex, as this land is not a plateau in the proper sense. Basin landscapes, called ‘ova,’ alternate with mountain ridges. On the higher slopes one finds relict woodland, while the low-lying parts are treeless.] He uses an analogy between Ankara and Salt Lake City to conclude that the natural vegetation would be grassy steppe. At least in the United States, comparable Artemisia steppe occurs in Nevada, with less than 300 mm (winter) rainfall. Around Ankara, in a fenced area, Walter saw perennial grasses, including various Stipa, Bromus tomentellus, B. erectus, Festuca sulcata, Phleum sp., Melica sp., and other plants. He therefore suggests, at least for Ankara, an original Stipa–Bromus tomentellus steppe, and similar vegetation along the route to Eskişehir. Artemisia fragrans grows at the same elevation range.
Two types of natural vegetation characterize the central Anatolian steppe: perennial grassland and Artemisia steppe. Botanists have argued about whether the Artemisia steppe is disturbed grassland or original vegetation cover (Walter 1956:98). I think it likely that around Gordion, whose elevation is so close to the steppe-forest boundary, relatively favorable conditions prevailed, allowing a dense grass cover that could have supported grazing animals, presumably wild in the distant past, but herds of domestic sheep and goat by the Middle Bronze Age. Note that Marsh (2005:168) found “typical grassland soils” in the Sakarya valley below later erosion deposits.
Catchment
Regional surveys and excavation at the site of Gordion give some evidence of population and land use in the Sakarya valley over the archaeological sequence. In different periods, the area from which food supplies were drawn would have expanded or contracted according to population levels and exchange relations (political, social, or economic) with people beyond the valley. With few exceptions, most of the food plants could easily have been produced locally; what cannot be determined from the remains is whether they actually were.
Irrigation
A variety of evidence can potentially bear on the question of whether or not crops were irrigated. The first thing to consider is whether it would have been desirable and possible to irrigate. Given the erratic nature of the climate, any technique that would even out harvests from year to year would be a good thing, especially in those time periods, such as the Middle Phrygian, when there was a relatively high population density. Since the late 1950s when the Sakarya was straightened, the river has been down-cutting the plain, and irrigation requires the use of pumps. Aerial photographs from the 1950s show a very different meandering river regime, but the annual flooding of the first half of the 20th century may itself be a relatively recent phenomenon, post-dating the archaeological deposits (Marsh 2005).
Several types of botanical evidence can address the question, but not all are relevant to the data currently available from Gordion.
1. Weed seeds of irrigated and unirrigated fields. Due to the unfortunate (for the archaeobotanist) practice of suppressing weed growth in the fields, I am unable to evaluate the ancient seed assemblage through comparison with the modern field weed composition. The evidence of the sedges, however, supports the view that habitats available for grazing were not constant, and that irrigation was most significant during the Middle Phrygian and Medieval periods.
2. Crop choice. Some crops would have been irrigated because they are summer-grown (millets, and in the Medieval samples, cotton and rice). The samples from the 1988/1989 excavation have few millets and show a suggestive association with the sedge seeds in the Medieval period, but not earlier. If wheat and barley were irrigated, one might expect some association with seeds of wet areas. Namely, in a situation (including the present) where both are cultivated, wheat is more likely than barley to be irrigated because it is less drought resistant and, favored as food, is the more valuable crop. Similarly, six-row barley is more likely to be irrigated than the two-row type. The notable stability in the proportion of wheat to barley reveals no identifiable change in irrigation practices of the two major cereals (wheat or barley).
3. Measurements of cereal grains. As discussed above, there is a similar lack of positive evidence for changes in irrigation practices based on the plumpness of the wheat and barley grains.
Ben Marsh (in Voigt and Young [1999:n. 6]) has suggested that clean clay used to cap the Early Phrygian level on the Citadel Mound may have consisted of sediments originating from “hydraulic work at the time of the reconstruction (e.g., digging irrigation canals or drainage ditches)”; both activities, especially the former, support an interpretation that land use for agriculture intensified. It may be no accident, then, that two indications of a relative shift toward the agricultural side of the agropastoral continuum date to this period: a dip in the proportion of sheep and goat and an increase in the wild seed to cereal ratio (see discussion in concluding chapter).
Population Movement
Several questions specific to the culture history of Gordion will also be addressed. For example, do changes in the agropastoral economy reflect changing ties to the world beyond the Sakarya valley? Anatolia has long been a crossroads between east and west, and north and south. Based on both ancient texts and modern archaeology, Gordion has attracted scholarly attention concerning several ancient episodes of migrations, or at least of population movement. One group of questions for Young, Sams, Voigt, and others is: When and under what circumstances did Phrygians arrive in Anatolia, and can they be identified by non-linguistic material remains? The same questions can be asked of the Celtic (Galatian) arrival and presence. Voigt and Henrickson’s stratigraphy-based analyses of changes in material culture have generated several hypotheses in this regard. Social, political, and ethnic