From royal gravemounds to civic necropoleis: Modern funeral archaeology investigating social stratigraphy and local identities in hellenistic Pergamon and the Eolic cities

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Felix Pirson
• Subject Area: Classical, Roman, Christian and Islamic Archaeology
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 246601872

The necropoleis and the great tumuli of Pergamon and the Eolian cities of Kyme and Elaia represent a priceless archaeological heritage for understanding the political, social and cultural dynamics in a key region of Hellenistic Asia Minor. They offer a wide range of sociological and historical contexts: on the one hand they provide information on every stratum of the society, from the Attalid princes and the prosperous citizens to the more modest section of the population; on the other hand, the studied area offers a large variety of political, social and cultural situations: the residential city of Pergamon, Kyme (the heart of Eolid, which long remained under the Seleucid control), and Elaia (both an Eolian city and the naval base of Pergamon). This situation gives an ideal background to approach a series of questions that are under discussion in the scholarly milieu: (1) The structure of the society through the funerary practices and behaviors; (2) The transformation of the forms of the urban ideological representations under the influence of the Hellenistic kingship; (3) The cultural impact of the interactions between the capital of the Attalid kingdom and the autonomous poleis; (4) The transformation of local identities and the circulation of ideological models from the Hellenistic Kingdoms in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Following themost recent research, our aim is to approach the funerary behaviors as a subtle and complex expression of the social, cultural and religious habitus. In order to renew such approaches one first has to reconsider the archaeological documentation produced since the 1880s and create a collaborative French-German program with the teams already working in this area. The project aims at developing a common strategy in order to enhance the exploitation of scientific data by combining the most innovative aspects of French and German research in funerary archaeology. Our goal is to constitute an interdisciplinary French-German-Turkish team that will be capable of intervening throughout this three-years project based on different sites of the region and that will also be able to develop collaboration with the other Turkish and foreign partners. The case studies are the urban necropoleis of Elaia and Kyme, as well as the large tumuli of Pergamon and Kyme. A series of common methods will be applied by the main French-German team, including but not limited to: Remote sensing, geophysical and geoseismic survey; excavation of strategic areas, chosen after the result of the surveys, in the necropoleis and among the large mounds; double program of funerary anthropological studies (archaeo-thanatology and biological anthropology) and archaeometry analyses (physico-chemical and paleo-genetical) on unearthed remains; concerted archaeological and architectural studies leading to a joint archaeological-historical analysis and interpretation according to the main questions 1-4 (see above).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Stéphane Verger