Troy

I thought this was going to be a hard blog to do. We went on a cruise to Greece and Turkey that included a tour of the archeologic site of Troy, the city made famous by Homer in the Iliad. The site was known to the Classical Greeks because Alexander the Great stopped at the Temple of Athena to make an offering before starting his conquest of Persia.

Troy started as a port city and gained wealth from its strategic location due to trade throughout the bronze age. It gradually silted in and is now about 4 to 6 kilometers from the sea. We have visited many other cities that were port cities in ancient times but are now far from the sea including: Ostia, Ephesus, Paestum, Pompei and Herculaneum. With the exception of the towns destroyed by a volcano, the other towns were largely abandoned. As a result, the location of Troy was lost to time.

The site is a real jumble of archeologic remains. City after city was built on top of each other and then large earthquakes jumbled the remains. As a result, what is left that requires careful inspection to interpret. There is no “Aha, This is Troy” moment. Some of the other cruisers found this unsatisfying. I assumed unwrapping it was going to be difficult. As long as one doesn’t have exorbitant expectations, the archeology on the ground is fascinating.

The man who is credited with discovering Troy was Henrich Schliemann. He was considered an amateur archeologist and used destructive means to do his archeology. He dug a trench through the site and as a result destroyed part of the site. Here is a picture of his trench.

Here is a picture of what some archeologists think was the progression of the site. There is a very useful interactive map HERE.

Wikipedia has an excellent article about Troy that can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy. I think I am going to progress chronologically from Troy I to Troy IX in my blog. I will put Wikipedia abstracts in Italics when I use them. This is not the order that they are encountered on the ground. This table is from the Wiki page.

There are several tools that archeologists use to determine age. Relative age can be determined by the strata that objects are found in. In this site, the strata can be somewhat jumbled by the intense earthquakes that occurred over the millennia. Typology/Seriation can be used by comparing the artifacts found as technology changed over time. For example, types of pottery evolved significantly over time. Absolute dating can be determined by radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology and other more obscure methods.

You can see the trail we walked on in an aerial view I got from Google Maps. It was very difficult to get a coherent view of the remains from just walking the site.

Troy I

Stratigraphy and Architecture of Troy I: the Excavations in »Schliemann’s Trench«

Key takeaways

1. Troy I architecture features Anatolian ‘row house’ style, contrasting earlier interpretations of free-standing ‘megaron’ structures.
2. Recent excavations (1987-1992) yielded new insights into Troy’s early settlement patterns and stratigraphy.
3. The Troy I cultural deposit spans approximately 2900 to 2600 cal. BC, indicating continuous habitation.
4. Schliemann’s Trench revealed a 4.5 m thick stratigraphic sequence, crucial for understanding the site’s chronology.
5. Troy’s layout reflects egalitarian community life through uniform housing structures with similar design and size.

Troy I was destroyed by fire around 2550 BC.

Troy II

Troy II was destroyed twice. After the first destruction, the citadel was rebuilt with a dense cluster of small houses on an irregular plan. The final destruction took place around 2300 BC. While some scholars have linked this destruction to a broader crisis that affected other Near Eastern sites, there is no definitive evidence for the city having been destroyed by an attack.^[15][16][14]

Troy II is notable for having been misidentified as Homeric Troy, during initial excavations, because of its massive architecture, treasure hoards, and catastrophic destruction. In particular Schliemann saw Homer’s description of Troy’s Scaean Gate reflected in Troy II’s imposing western gate. However, later excavations demonstrated that the site was a thousand years too old to have coexisted with Mycenaean Greeks.^{[15][16][17][18]}

Troy III (ca. 2300 B.C. – 2200 B.C.)

Troy IV (ca. 2200 B.C. – 1950 B.C.)

Schliemann destroyed much of this.

Troy V (ca. 1950 B.C. – 1750 B.C.)

Knowledge of Troy V is very limited. It seems to have suffered an earthquake as there is no evidence of an attack by external enemies.

Troy VI (ca. 1750 B.C. – 1300 B.C.)

Troy VI was destroyed around 1300 BC, corresponding with the sublayer known as Troy VIh. Damage in the Troy VIh layer includes extensive collapsed masonry and subsidence in the southeast of the citadel, indicative of an earthquake. Alternative hypotheses include an internal uprising as well as a foreign attack, though the city was not burned and no victims were found in the debris.^{[5][6](pp 64–66)[14](p30)}

Troy VII (ca. 1300 B.C. – 1050 B.C.)

The city was destroyed around 1180 BC, roughly contemporary with the Late Bronze Age collapse but subsequent to the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces. The destruction layer shows evidence of enemy attack, including scorch marks.^{[5][15][6](p 59)}

Troy VII was the peak of Troy civilizations and was destroyed violently at the end of the Bronze Age. However, it was not the Troy of Homer’s epic as Mycenae no longer existed when it fell.

Troy VIII – IX (ca. 950 B.C. – 500 A.D.)

Troy VIII was founded during the Greek Dark Ages and lasted until the Roman era. Though the site had never been entirely abandoned, its redevelopment as a major city was spurred by Greek immigrants who began building around 700 BC. During the Archaic period, the city’s defences once again included the reused citadel wall of Troy VI. Later on, the walls became tourist attractions and sites of worship. Other remains of the Bronze Age city were destroyed by the Greeks’ building projects, notably the peak of the citadel where the Troy VI palace is likely to have stood. By the classical era, the city had numerous temples, a theatre, among other public buildings, and was once again expanding to the south of the citadel. Troy VIII was destroyed in 85 BC, and subsequently rebuilt as Troy IX. A series of earthquakes devastated the city around 500 AD, though finds from the Late Byzantine era attest to continued habitation at a small scale.^[5][15]

Unfortunately, the archeology on the ground doesn’t seem to support a Trojan War as described by Homer. However, there seems to have been conflict with the Myceneans over a period of about two hundred years.

It seems that the Trojans reused architectural features, such as walls and fortifications frequently. So some features span multiple city builds. There is a mostly clear progression in the stone work. In the early phases, there is a loose assemblage of small stones. In phases 2, 3 there is utilization of clay bricks. Later phases involved larger dressed stone construction.

The Greeks built a temple on the remains of Troy. The story of the Trojan War was important enough that Alexander thee Great made a sacrifice there at the start of his conquest of Persia. The site was also revered by the Romans. It wasn’t until after 500 AD that it was lost to time.

Well we have been to Troy. It was a unique experience. I think to better appreciate it, one needs to do considerable research ahead of the visit, otherwise all there is to see is a jumble of rocks.

Mark, Wink, Meg and Kate-Lynne