The ancient city of Sardis (Greek: Σάρδεις) in western Turkey, once a major center between the Greek world and the Near East, has been under continuous excavation for 65 years, making it one of the longest-running archaeological projects in history.
The Harvard–Cornell Exploration of Sardis, launched in 1958, marked a new milestone this year when the site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. The project is now institutionally housed under the Harvard Art Museums, reinforcing its status as one of the longest-running university-led excavations in the world.
Generations of research build a rare archaeological record
Benjamin Anderson, associate professor of history of art and visual studies, said the project’s uninterrupted leadership has allowed researchers to build one of the most extensive archaeological archives in the region. He noted that the continuity of directors and teams has been central to the project’s success.
Teams working today include scholars trained by earlier generations, preserving field knowledge across decades. Sardis is also known as one of only three excavation sites in the world that most U.S. classical archaeologists pass through at some point in their careers.
Anderson has focused on the city’s acropolis, a key area during the Byzantine period. Sardis is well known in ancient written sources, but modern archaeology has made it possible to tell its story through material evidence rather than text alone.
Capital of the wealthy Lydian Empire
Sardis served as the capital of the Lydian Empire, positioned between the Mediterranean coast and the Anatolian plateau. The Lydians are credited with inventing coinage, and their ruler, Croesus, was remembered as a symbol of wealth in the ancient world.
The city later fell to Alexander the Great, then became part of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires. Its long occupation is still visible because a modern city never grew on top of it.
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In the 1950s and 1960s, the Harvard–Cornell team also undertook large-scale architectural reconstruction, rebuilding the monumental bath-gymnasium complex and the largest ancient synagogue ever discovered. These reconstructions were pioneering at the time and later influenced restoration practices at other ancient sites.
Sardis in the Greek historical and cultural world
Sardis occupies a central place in Greek historical writing. Greek authors such as Herodotus and Xenophon used the city and its rulers as examples in their accounts of wealth, politics, and imperial rise and fall.
After Alexander the Great captured Sardis in 334 BCE, the city entered the Hellenistic world, adopting Greek civic structures, language, and urban planning.
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The Temple of Artemis at Sardis became one of the largest Greek sanctuaries in Asia Minor, and later inscriptions, statues, and public buildings show the long-lasting imprint of Greek culture on the city’s identity.
Excavations have also uncovered a Persian-period garbage pit, an ancient gold-refining area, a commercial district, and a sanctuary plaza that took 15 years to excavate. Together, these discoveries have helped define Sardis as one of the most extensively documented urban centers in Anatolia.
New research turns to burial landscapes
Annetta Alexandridis, associate professor of history of art and classics and associate director of the project, is leading the first full survey of Sardis’ Roman-era cemeteries, many of which have never been documented. The work expands on earlier studies of Bin Tepe, a burial landscape north of the city containing some of the largest tumuli recorded in the ancient world.
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A complicated legacy of early U.S. excavation
A large American-led excavation in the early 1900s removed artifacts under loose conditions. Some pieces were exported, damaged, or lost, including a massive column now displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The case later became one of the earliest international debates over the restitution of illegally exported antiquities, and some objects were eventually returned to Turkey after legal and diplomatic pressure. The dispute helped shape modern conversations about cultural stewardship and ownership.
A field school for future archaeologists
The project now includes Turkish researchers and U.S. universities such as Wisconsin–Madison and UC Berkeley. Cornell sends students each summer, where they document artifacts, supervise trench work, and train alongside local excavation workers.
Most students begin by cataloguing ceramics—described by Anderson as “broken pots”—inside the depot before moving into trench supervision.
Because Sardis sits on an alluvial plain of deep silt, excavation trenches are not open pits but narrow shafts, some descending up to 12 meters. Students record the layers from above while trained local workers remove soil, a process Anderson has described as terrifying in its own right.
In recent years, a large number of local women have joined the excavation and restoration teams, forming a core part of the workforce and preservation effort.
UNESCO listing brings visibility and urgency
The site remains vulnerable to erosion, agricultural damage, and industrial-scale looting, which now involves bulldozers, dynamite, and armed treasure-hunters targeting burial mounds.
One of the most visible examples of local participation is Leyla Uğurer, a Sardis-born doctoral student who now supervises excavations after growing up watching the digs as a child. For Uğurer and others from the region, the UNESCO designation carries both personal meaning and practical impact.
The new World Heritage status is expected to increase funding, improve legal protection, raise international visibility, and support long-term preservation plans.
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