T he site of Gordion is notable in world archaeol- ogy for the astonishing quantity and variety of wooden artifacts that survive from Phrygian burial contexts, including the tomb structure of Tumulus MM itself and the wooden furniture within (Lieb- hart and Johnson 2005; Simpson and Spirydow- icz 1999). Wooden beams from the Tumulus MM structure and from the destruction level of the Phry- gian citadel on the Citadel Mound have provided tree sections for radiocarbon and dendrochronologi- cal dating of the site and aided in the creation of an absolute chronology for the eastern Mediterranean (DeVries et al. 2003; Kuniholm 1996). Understand- ing the functional use of wood from settlement con- texts at Gordion, however, is rarely as easy as inding preserved wooden artifacts in a tomb. Most wood, whether structural, fuel, or furniture, ends up as car- bonized fragments strewn across the site. It is the goal of this chapter to use a contextual, stratigraphic analysis of those fragments of wood charcoal to un- derstand how inhabitants of Phrygian Gordion uti- lized wood resources in their natural environment and chose particular wood types for a variety of functional uses. Analytical Approaches to Archaeological Charcoal Carbonized wood often makes up the largest per- centage in botanical assemblages from archaeological contexts, due to its ubiquity, utility, and frequency of deliberate burning. Identiication of archaeologi- cal wood charcoal has a greater than 100-year-long history (see historical overviews in Asouti and Austin 2005; Pearsall 2000; Smart and Hofman 1988), but the primary focus of the technique remains ecologi- cal interpretation. he identiication of natural envi- ronmental change (Willcox 1999), human-induced deforestation (Miller 1985, 1991, 1999b), and local ecological interactions (Asouti 2003a, 2003b; Pears- all 1983) has proven the value of charcoal analysis to paleoenvironmental and ecological studies. Previous analysis of Anatolian charcoal assem- blages has focused on these environmental variables, including work done at Pınarbaşı (Asouti 2003b), Çatalhöyük (Asouti 2005, Asouti and Hather 2001), Cafer Höyük (Willcox 1991), Can Hasan (Willcox 1979), Aşvan (Willcox 1974), Troy (Shay, Anderson, and Shay 1982), and Gordion (Miller 1991, 1999b, 2007). Gordion has proved an excellent site for the investigation of human interaction with the natural environment due to the time depth of settlement, focus on local and regional settlement patterns (Ke- alhofer 2005), geomorphological survey (Marsh 1999, 2005), and ongoing ethnographic and ecolog- ical studies (Gürsan-Salzman 2005; Miller 1999a). he multiple accidental ires documented archaeo- logically at Gordion, in addition to the deliberate combustion of wood over thousands of years, have generated massive quantities of wood charcoal at the site. Since 1988, this charcoal has been systemati- cally recovered and analyzed (Miller 1991, Sams and Voigt 1990). While these previous studies have utilized wood charcoal to enhance our understanding of the pa- 4 Reconstructing the Functional Use of Wood at Phrygian Gordion through Charcoal Analysis John M. Marston This content downloaded from 128.197.33.133 on Wed, 04 Nov 2015 23:05:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions