• January 8, 2026 | 8:00 AM - 10:30 AM
• Continental 7, Ballroom Level

1E: New Research on Lydian, Hellenistic, and Roman Sardis (Colloquium)

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Organizers:
Nicholas Cahill, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Overview Statement:
Archaeological research at Sardis in Türkiye has produced new insights into this long-lived, multiethnic metropolis and capital of the Lydian Empire. Excavation and survey have taken place in the core of the ancient city, at the edges of the fortified, formal city, and in the extensive suburban settlements and necropolises. Research has covered periods from the Bronze Age through the Byzantine periods, with a particular focus on the Lydian period of the ninth through sixth centuries B.C.E., when Sardis was the capital of a major empire that extended as far as central Anatolia.

Papers about recent fieldwork, excavation, and survey address questions of the rise of the Lydian kingdom and empire in the Iron Age. New evidence from the palatial quarter of the urban core shows that the region was monumentalized with megalithic walls and terraces in the eighth century B.C.E., a century before literary sources describe the rise of the Mermnad dynasty. Evidence for earlier, monumental Bronze Age terracing shows that literary sources such as Strabo, who describes Sardis as dating to after the Trojan War, are mistaken. In the extensive suburbs of the city, a new excavation sector is revealing a residential neighborhood destroyed by Cyrus the Great in 547 B.C.E., leaving rich domestic assemblages in situ. Surrounding and probably interleaved with the extramural settlements were scattered necropolises of chamber tombs, tumuli, and other tombs, some of which were excavated by H.C. Butler in the early 20th century but are now being mapped and systematically recorded for the first time.

New discoveries in Hellenistic and Roman Sardis include important new information about the extramural temple of Artemis, one of the largest Ionic temples in the world, including its optical refinements and phasing. A major sanctuary in the city center was a neocorate sanctuary, probably dedicated to the Emperor Claudius. The sanctuary terrace was converted to elite housing in the later fourth century C.E., and these houses, together with the temple of Artemis and all other buildings at Sardis, were destroyed in a devastating earthquake in the early seventh century, a catastrophe seen in other western Anatolian sites as well but not attested in historical accounts.