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It is the goal of the current conservation program to develop and implement a detailed site and regional management plan within the next five years after gaining greater familiarity with the physical and social dimensions of Gordion, the nearby town of Yassihöyük, and the surrounding region. As a physical place, Gordion is defined by the citadel’s earthen mound situated in a rolling plain surrounded by satellite constructions (e.g. fortifications, town, roads, etc.) and a surrounding royal cemetery of tumuli and natural features. The excavation or subtractive revealing of the early citadel once built upon, and now within, the mound, the enormous spoil heaps, and the now partially exposed Phrygian structures and subsequent Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine reoccupations all contribute to the physical reality today.
 
  Three degrees of archaeological site protection have been established as part of the Conservation Management Plan for Gordion and its environs.  METU, 2007. Click on image above to download a high resolution PDF.  
 
From the earliest years of archaeological research at Gordion, the site has been understood as a complex landscape including settlement mounds, fortifications, the surrounding tumuli, roads, and other associated features. However new appreciation of the site as part of a regional cultural landscape is now underway by the Graduate Program in Restoration, Department of Architecture at Middle East Technical University under the direction of Evin Erder and Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann. Until that study is complete, a focus on the citadel and its immediate built features will continue to dominate the conservation discussions. Critical to this dialogue and subsequent actions is the consideration of both the constructed (and deconstructed) mound itself and the scarps that define the excavation and the exposed citadel core. To that extent a five-year conservation plan for the citadel has been developed by the Architectural Conservation Laboratory, School of Design of the University of Pennsylvania under Frank Matero.
 

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