Rodney Young

Who was Rodney Young?

Rodney Stuart Young was an American Near Eastern archaeologist. He is known for his excavation of the city of Gordium, capital of the ancient Phrygians and associated with the legendary king, Midas.

Young received an A.B. in Classics from Princeton University in 1929, and then an M.A. from Columbia University in 1932. In 1940 Young earned his Ph.D. in classics and archaeology from Princeton University. He had excavated in the agora at Athens before becoming Curator of the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1950, where he helped to build the graduate program known today as the Graduate Group in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. At the same juncture Young began a series of new excavations at Gordium and continued as director until his untimely death in 1974. After his death the leadership of the excavations eventually passed to his student, G. Kenneth Sams, now Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.