Tumuli in the ancient territory of Hierapolis in Phrygia

The paper concerns some results of the research activities conducted during 2005-2007 in the ancient territory of Hierapolis in Phrygia, completing the reconstruction of the ancient topography and settlement from the Prehistoric to the Ottoman age. During archaeological surveys in the area surrounding the city, in the Lykos valley, and also more distant, on the broad plateau north of Hierapolis (between 5 and 17 km from the city), some isolated as well as grouped together tumuli of the Hellenistic and Early Imperial periods were found and studied. These tumuli belonged to rural villages of the indigenous populations that lived in the area south of the Meander river and constitute an important and new documentation of the characteristics of this burial type in southern Phrygia. In general, they have the same size and building characteristics as those in the necropoleis surrounding the city, but the ones on the plateau have less refined chambers and no remains of the crepidoma are preserved. Presumably, they belonged to the dominant classes of the rural communities which had adopted the funerary typologies of the urban aristocracy; perhaps these tumuli can also be considered as landmarks of the occupation of the chora by the Greek colonists that founded Hierapolis.