University of Pennsylvania Museum Excavations at Gordion,
Turkey, Reveal Celtic Sacrifices  04 JANUARY 2002, PHILADELPHIA,
PA—Discovery of grisly evidence of strangulation and
decapitation, and bizarre arrangements of human and animal
bones, has solved the longstanding mystery about the Celtic
presence at Gordion, Turkey, where the University of
Pennsyvlania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has been
excavating since 1950. The chronologically rich site, long
renowned as the capital of Phrygia in the 8th century B.C. and
the center from which the famed King Midas once ruled, is about
60 miles southwest of Ankara in central Turkey.  Archaeologists
knew from ancient sources that in 278 B.C., about four centuries
after the Phrygians began to lose political power, King
Nicomedes I of Bithynia (an ancient kingdom located just to the
east of modern Istanbul) welcomed as allies 20,000 European
Celts, veterans who had invaded Macedonia two years earlier. The
Galatai, as these warriors called themselves, marched i