Production Patterns of Sarcophagi in Phrygia

Abstract

In the past the “Sarkophagforschung” has mainly been focused on the study of fully finished, richly decorated sarcophagi, which are on display in private or public collections, or which have been discovered during rescue excavations on ancient sites. In many cases the result has been that those sarcophagi were studied as isolated artifacts, or at the most as artifacts belonging to a specific group of related, fully finished items, without any effort or even any possibility to establish the preliminary stages in their production. The study of this last aspect was started by J.B.Ward-Perkins, and recently has been stimulated a lot by the research of Nuşin Asgari.