COLLOQUIUM: Brian Rose, UPENN, "Troy and Gordion: the Historiography of Excavation at Two Legendary Sites in Anatolia"

I have had the good fortune to direct or co-direct excavations at two legendary sites in Turkey–-Troy and Gordion, and the fieldwork that I have conducted there over the course of the last 25 years has continually required me to assess the most effective strategies for presenting them to the public and the scholarly community. In this talk I attempt to place my own work at these sites in historiographic perspective-- highlighting the positive and negative aspects of the projects, with a focus on the extent to which regional, national, and global developments have shaped our research agendas. I also reflect on the discipline of archaeology in Turkey and the Near East at the end of the talk.