The Sardis Campaigns of 1994 and 1995

Excavation at Sardis in 1994 and 1995 further exposed a Late Roman suburb, with houses and colonnaded streets of the fourth-seventh centuries A. D., and a massive defense wall of the seventh-sixth centuries B. C., together with destruction debris of the latter and associated weapons that evidently belong to the Persian attack of the 540s B. C. Foundations for a crepis wall that curbed one of the largest tumuli in the Bin Tepe cemetery were also found. Geophysical resistivity and magnetic surveys were conducted over a total of 2.4 ha of the city site and at Bin Tepe, and results were checked by excavation in two locations. Ancient quarries in the environs of Sardis were sampled in an attempt to identify sources of limestone and marble used in buildings of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. at Sardis and Bin Tepe. Drilling/coring inside a large tumulus at Bin Tepe indicated that anomalies previously detected in a ground-penetrating radar survey do not represent a burial chamber.