On April 6 at 12:30pm, Associate Professor Jordan Pickett will give an invited lecture at Bryn Mawr College concerning results from his last four years of fieldwork on fortifications of the Byzantine Acropolis at Sardis, in western Turkey, a subproject that is part of the international Harvard-Cornell Expedition to Sardis since 1958, one of the most important American excavations in the eastern Mediterranean. Professor Pickett's talk is also accessible via zoom.

 

Abstract: This paper considers the results of new fieldwork undertaken at Sardis since 2019, as part of the Harvard-Cornell Exploration of Sardis, with a focus on the Byzantine Acropolis. A particularly challenging environment, the Acropolis consists of tectonically-uplifted gravelly riverbeds, which have become extremely eroded and sheer over the centuries. There are significant questions about the historical deformation of the Acropolis, which have consequences for our understanding of the massive spolia-built fortifications of the Byzantine period that sit atop. These are hundreds of meters of walls, entirely built of recycled materials, including every known Roman period structure from the city below, in addition to likely dozens of hitherto unidentified monuments. Gates, vaulted interior structures, posterns: the Byzantine fortifications at Sardis sit in rare company alongside Nicaea, Ephesos, Pergamon, and Magnesia on the Maeander, as monuments of the so-called Transitional Byzantine Period (c. AD 650 – 850). New radiocarbon results concerning the date of the Acropolis are discussed here, alongside new geomorphological studies, as well as architectural and historical analysis."