royal tumuli (Tumulus MM, Tumulus P, and Tumulus W), along with carbonized remains from the destruction level of the city mound. Young died in 1974, before finishing his final report on the excavation of these tombs, but his monograph, Three Great Early Tumuli, The Gordion Excavations Final Reports, Volume 1, was published posthumously by a group of his colleagues, based on his original notes. Three Great Early Tumuli detailed the excavation of the burials and their grave goods in preliminary interpretations and working drawings. During the production of this volume, many of the early interpretations of the wooden artifacts were found to be incorrect, and a reassessment of the finds was begun by Dr. Elizabeth Simpson, now emeritus professor of ancient art and archaeology at the Bard Graduate Center, New York, NY. In 1981, Simpson went to Turkey to photograph and draw the objects and discovered that the wood was deteriorating. lt was believed that this had been caused by water that seeped into the tomb as a result of drilling in order to determine the location of the chamber prior to excavation. A project to study and conserve the Gordion wooden artifacts was then organized under her direction with the support of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Work has been carried out since that time by the Gordion Furniture Project team in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi), Ankara, Turkey. More than 40 archaeologists, conservators, scientists, and artists have been affiliated with the project since its inception, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society, the 1984 Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Getty Grant Program, and other foundations and individual donors. During the past 30 years, most of the wood has been conserved, and many of the objects have been reconstructed for display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. The collection is now considered to be the largest and most important group of well-preserved ancient wooden artifacts excavated from the Near East. Tumulus MM Rodney Young named the largest burial mound at the site Tumulus MM—for “Midas Mound,” after the famous Phrygian king Midas, who ruled at Gordion during the second half of the eighth century B.C. Young eventually came to believe that the tomb’s occupant was not Midas but rather his father, although in either case the wooden finds from the burial can be associated