Archaeological Exploration of Sardis
Since its founding in 1958 by Harvard and Cornell Universities, the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis has excavated, conserved, and published on numerous aspects of the ancient city of Sardis in western Türkiye, dating from the prehistoric through the Islamic periods. Each year’s excavation team consists of 50–80 scholars, students, and professionals from the United States, Türkiye, and around the world, including experts in archaeology, art history, architecture, anthropology, conservation, numismatics, epigraphy, illustration, photography, geophysics, history, and other disciplines.
With marketing and distribution by Harvard University Press, the Sardis Expedition has published more than twenty reports and monographs to date as well as yearly field reports, exhibition catalogs, and countless studies in a wide variety of fields.
Sub-Collections
Below are the in-print works in this collection. Sort by title, author, format, publication date, or price »
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![]() | The Corinthian, Attic, and Lakonian Pottery from Sardis This collaborative work consists of three generously illustrated sections presenting the ceramic finds excavated at Sardis, but produced in the mainland Greek centers of Corinth, Athens, and Sparta. The authors’ study of this material from the Harvard–Cornell excavations at Sardis offers new evidence of the taste for specific Greek wares and shapes in Anatolia before the time of Alexander the Great. | |
![]() | The Hellenistic Pottery from Sardis: The Finds through 1994 Hellenistic art in Asia Minor is characterized by diverse cultural influences, both indigenous and Greek. This work presents a comprehensive catalogue of the Hellenistic pottery found at Sardis by two archaeological expeditions. The main catalogue includes over 750 items from the current excavations; in addition, material from some 50 Hellenistic tombs excavated in the early twentieth century is published in its entirety for the first time. | |
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![]() | Love for Lydia: A Sardis Anniversary Volume Presented to Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr. This generously illustrated volume presents new studies by scholars closely involved with Professor Greenewalt’s excavations during the Sardis Expedition in western Turkey. | |
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![]() | A Survey of Sardis and the Major Monuments Outside the City Walls | |
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![]() | Lydian Architecture: Ashlar Masonry Structures at Sardis This richly illustrated volume examines monuments of Sardis and environs in the context of contemporary developments in Lydia and throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. It illuminates traditions of Anatolian kingship, technological exchange between Lydia and Greece and the Near East, and the origins of Persian imperial architecture. | |
![]() | Between 1962 and 1973, the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis excavated two superimposed churches at this ancient site, one early Christian, one Byzantine. In this richly illustrated volume, Hans Buchwald documents the architecture and history of these buildings from the fourth to the sixteenth century. | |
![]() | Jane DeRose Evans focuses on the over 8,000 coins minted in the Lydian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods that were excavated between 1973 and 2013 in the Harvard–Cornell Expedition. The book places coins within eastern Mediterranean historical, cultural and economic contexts in order to better understand the monetized economy of Sardis. | |
![]() | Sardis: Greek and Latin Inscriptions, Part II: Finds from 1958 to 2017 The capital of Lydia was of outstanding importance as the residence of the kings and satraps. Georg Petzl presents a comprehensive corpus of epigraphic finds since 1958. Each inscription is accompanied by a description of the monument, bibliography, translation, and commentary; indices, concordances, photographs, and maps complement the collection. | |
![]() | The Temple of Artemis at Sardis In this lavishly illustrated two-volume monograph, Fikret K. Yegül offers a wide-ranging overview of the Temple of Artemis at Sardis. His block-by-block description of the extant elements of the building elucidates the two primary phases in the temple’s design and construction, which date to the Hellenistic and the Roman imperial periods. | |
![]() | Ordinary Lydians at Home: The Lydian Trenches of the House of Bronzes and Pactolus Cliff at Sardis This publication of two major Lydian excavation sectors at Sardis is the first in-depth presentation of the architecture, pottery, and other artifacts belonging to the inhabitants of this native Anatolian kingdom. The two-volume book catalogues nearly 800 objects, illustrated by more than 300 color plates of photos and detailed drawings. | |
![]() | The Synagogue at Sardis, discovered in 1962, is the largest known in the ancient world. It caused significant revision of previous assumptions about Judaism in the Roman Empire. This long-awaited, copiously illustrated volume discusses in detail the history of the building, its decoration, and the place of the Jewish community in society. |