Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – Sardis in Türkiye has a history marked by frequent changes in rule, from the Greeks and Romans to the Ottoman Empire. Despite this dynamic past, archaeological research at Sardis has maintained notable continuity.
Since 1958, the site has been systematically excavated through the Harvard-Cornell Exploration of Ancient Sardis, making it one of the longest-running institutional archaeological projects in existence.
An aerial view shows the Temple of Artemis and the acropolis that were excavated in Sardis. Credit: Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College
“It’s really important that it has institutional continuity,” said Benjamin Anderson, associate professor of history of art and visual studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Many of us know and have been mentored by colleagues of the previous generation of excavators. As a result, it’s one of the few long-term archaeological projects in the region that has generated a critical mass of data.”
Over the past several years, Anderson has been systematically documenting the walls and structures of the city’s acropolis—a significant area during the Byzantine period that followed Roman rule. According to Anderson, this is a city that appears in numerous ancient historical sources. However, only in the last 75 years have scintists gained the ability to tell its story through archaeological discoveries made by this project.
This summer marked a major milestone: thanks to the combined efforts of the project team and an actively involved local community, the site was officially added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Anderson emphasized that gaining deeper insights into a culture through its material remains is relatively rare and demands sustained dedication. He noted that long-term commitment is precisely what UNESCO’s World Heritage designation celebrates. From its inception, this project has prioritized sharing findings and making them accessible not just to scholars but also to tourists, locals, and diverse audiences.
Sardis, once the capital of the Iron Age empire of Lydia, was strategically situated between the Mediterranean Sea and the Anatolian plateau. According to Annetta Alexandridis, associate professor of history of art and classics in A&S, Sardis served as “a place of cultural encounter between the East and West.”
The Lydian period holds significant interest for archaeologists and historians due to several notable achievements. The Lydians are recognized for inventing coinage, a major development in economic history. Their most famous ruler, King Croesus, became legendary for his immense wealth. Over time, the Lydian empire fell to Alexander the Great. In subsequent centuries, Sardis became part of first the Roman Empire and later both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires.
“Because it was not overbuilt by a modern city—it’s only a little village—Sardis gives you a really long history, from the Bronze Age, third millennium BCE, to basically today,” Alexandridis said. “These layers are all there, and make it sometimes difficult to excavate, because they are not clearly stratified. They interfere with each other, but, in a way, it’s an ongoing history, and that makes it so fascinating for us.”
As associate director of the project, Alexandridis has been examining the Roman funerary culture of the city and is currently undertaking a comprehensive survey of its cemeteries. Unlike the well-documented Bin Tepe cemetery—located about 10 kilometers north of Sardis and known for some of the largest burial mounds (tumuli) on record—the city’s other cemeteries have not received significant scholarly attention.
Sardis holds a notable place in the history of American archaeology. The first modern excavation, initiated in the early 20th century by the American Society for the Excavation of Sardis, was described by Alexandridis as “a really large-scale exploitation.” During this period, major sites such as the Temple of Artemis and various necropolises were excavated. However, many artifacts suffered damage or loss; some were even transported to the United States under questionable circumstances—including a massive column now prominently displayed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The initial phase of excavation ended with the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish war in the early 1920s. Over subsequent decades, some artifacts gradually made their way back to Türkiye.
“It’s one of the first cases where we can see the whole discussion about restitution of antiquities that were illegally exported, until some were returned to Türkiye,” Alexandridis said. “It has all of these broader issues of how to deal with cultural heritage from a not only preservation or scholarly point of view, but also political and legal, and of the question of stewardship and responsibility for culture in the past.”
The collaboration between Cornell and Harvard originated in 1958 under the direction of Harvard’s George M. A. Hanfmann and Cornell’s Henry Detweiler from the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, who specialized in the documentation of historical structures.
“If you went to Sardis in 1950, there were a few things kind of sticking up above ground, but there was nothing really to see, per se,” Anderson said. “The architects were the first generation of Cornellians who were there, and the project really committed to taking what they’d excavated responsibly, supplementing it through newly manufactured pieces, and presenting a total experience of the structure, instead of just producing a drawing and putting it in a publication.”
Aphrodite Temple. Credit: M.aclan – Public Domain
During the 1950s and 1960s, the team undertook the reconstruction of a monumental bath-gymnasium complex and the largest known ancient synagogue. These pioneering projects set important precedents for similar reconstructions at other archaeological sites. Subsequent discoveries included city mud brick walls, an acropolis, a garbage pit from the Persian period, a site used for gold refinement, and an ancient shopping center. More recently, excavations revealed a sanctuary plaza that required 15 years of dedicated work to uncover.
Sardis sits on an alluvial plain, so excavation trenches are deep shafts, some reaching 12 meters—”quite terrifying in their own right,” Anderson said. Local trained workers remove soil while students observe, document, take notes, ask questions, and call for expert input when necessary. Sardis is one of three key classical archaeology excavation projects worldwide that most U. S. archaeologists have worked at.
The Harvard-Cornell team collaborates with global experts from various disciplines; over half are Turkish specialists and students. Local contributions are crucial.”Including local expertise is always a topic,” Alexandridis said. Now, many women from Sardis also excavate and restore artifacts. Leyla Ugurer, a doctoral student from the Sardis region who initially studied English before turning to classical archaeology, explained: “To learn archaeology, you have to work at the site.” In 2022 she began surveying rock-cut tombs spanning Lydian to Roman periods and has continued each summer since. This year she supervised the excavation of a late Roman site.
Ugurer chose Cornell for her Ph.D., where Alexandridis advises her due to their shared interest in funerary art—a field that offers insight into cultural views on aesthetics and daily life. She emphasized Sardis’s historic importance as a major ancient trade center where the first coin was minted and Alexander the Great visited: “Being raised here gives you familiarity with its culture and archaeological significance.”The UNESCO designation highlights both emotional pride and practical benefits: increased global recognition could bring more funding, tourism, research opportunities, and better protection for vulnerable sites, which have long been threatened by agriculture or industrial-scale looting.
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Despite ongoing challenges like treasure-seekers destroying tombs with dynamite or bulldozers—often armed—the story of Sardis is slowly taking shape, piece by piece, through long-term commitment. As Anderson made clear, you may not find something significant every season; sometimes it takes years before discoveries add up.
Written by Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com Staff Writer