• latw-109-1
    Lydion from Gordion, side view. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul)
  • latw-109-2
    Lydion with provincial marbled decoration, from Gordion, Tumulus A, No. 109. (Drawing by Crawford H. Greenewalt, jr.)
  • latw-109-10
    Lydion from Gordion. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul)

Lydion from Gordion

Date
Ca. 560-520 BC, Lydian or Late Lydian
Museum
Polatlı, Gordion Museum, 44.34.66
Museum Inventory No.
44.34.66
Material
Ceramic
Object Type
Pottery
Pottery Shape
Lydion
Pottery Ware
Lydianizing Painted - Marbled
Pottery Attribution
Site
Gordion
Description
Pottery, broken and badly burnt, repaired (Gordion inv. no. 9P9). Flat rim, outflaring neck, round body, semi-conical foot; slightly lopsided. Clay micaceous, grey-brown at core, reddish near surfaces; friable. The exterior is covered with cream slip over which dark slip is applied in pairs of narrow, closely spaced horizontal bands, closely spaced chevrons on upper neck, and a series of closely spaced wiggly stripes on upper surface of rim, lower neck, body, and foot. On rim, radiating narrow wiggly stripes in dark on upper surface of rim body, pairs of narrow bands between single rows of narrow wiggly stripes in dark. Height 0.148 m, diameter of rim 0.12 m.
Comments
The lydion was recovered in the cremation burial of a young girl [“scattered, west of pit and to north” (Gordion Expedition inventory card)] under a tumulus (Tumulus A; excavated in 1950, on the first morning of the first day of the first year of excavation at Gordion by the University of Pennsylvania). Wiggly stripes on rim and body may be a local “Phrygian” alternative to Lydian marbling.
See Also
Greenewalt, “Lydian Pottery”; Greenewalt, “Cosmetics”.
Bibliography
For context material, Young 1951, 17-20; Young quoted by Edwards 1980, 159; Kohler 1980, 67-69. 
Author
CHG