Troy

sido the fortification walls of Troy II, they carne upon a largo building (later called VI
A) similar in plan to the throne-hsll in the palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns; it was
clearly associated with a deposit of Troy VI which contained a good many
fragments of Mycenacan pottery of the types that were well known to the two
excavators from their explorations at Mycenaean and Tiryns. This was a startling
blow to Schliemann, but he at once laid plans for a renewal of the excavations in a
campaign on a large scale in 1891. Untimely death on the 26th of December 1890
deprived him of the opportunity to test by further digging whether it was necessary
to shift Homer’s Troy from the Second to the Sixth City.
That privilege and task devolved upon Dórpfeld, who in i8pj and 1894 discovered
the fortification walls and the great houses of Troy VI, in association with which he
found much Mycenaean pottery. It therefore became clear that the Sixth Settlement
must be, in pan at least, contemporary with the strongholds of Tiryns and Mycenac,
and Dórpfeld with confidence identified it as the Troy of Homer and Priam.
In its work some 40 years later the Archaeological Expedition of the University of
Cincinnati was able to differentiate in the undisturbed debris that was still left on the
mound no fewer than 46 strata: each of the nine major layers, as had earlier been
noted, was composed of two, three, five, eight, or even more minor strata, these
subdivisions no doubt indicating lesser chronological phases within the main
periods.

In broader terms, comparable with (he system of Minoan classification and

chronology introduced by Sir Arthur Evans, it has now become clear that the layer
and periods from Troy I to and including Troy V belong to an era that correspond to
the Early Aegean Bronze Age, while the beginning of Troy VI marks the sharp tum
to the Middle Bronze Age. The Sixth Settlement maintained itself without a real
break uno the later part of the Aegean Late Bronze Age, though the actual end of
that era is represented by Troy VIIa and Vllb. These two phases, as Dorpfdd
himself in 1937 suggested, might logically have been named Troy Vli and VIj, since
they form a direct continuation of that culture; but it was feared that much confusion
might be caused to scholars and readers accustomed to the hitherto prevailing
terminology. With Troy Vllb in, in any event, we come to an abrupt change,
apparently signalling the arrival of a new people. Exactly how long this régime

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 Tbt Arcbaeofogical Troy
survived is not yet known; but the site seems ultimately to have been abandoned
and left deserted for some centuries until reoccupied about 700 BC by Hellenic
colonies. The corresponding layer is called Troy VIII; and Troy IX then designates
the period and ruins of the Hellenistic and Román city of Ilion.
Visitors at excavations have often asked how it was possible for public bmldir.gs
and private houses to be covered over so deeply by the heaping up of earth and
debris. The enormous depth of the accumulation on the mound of Hissarlik might
perhaps require a few words of explanation.
Throughout the Bronze Age nearly all ordinary dwellings were built with walls of
crude brick which had generally been laid, within a sturdy framework of wood, on a
low stone foundation, or socle, that projected a foot or more above ground. The roof
was made of rough timbers or trunks of small trees, laid close together, supporting
a thick layer of earth or day probably topped by thatch. Because wood and thatch
were freely used, fires were frequent in those times. When a building burned down
the roof fell in and the walls collapsed; and the same was likely to happen if the roof
was blown off by a gale. If rain followed, the unbaked brick dissolved into clay. In a
closely packed village when one house caught fire it seems often to have spread
across and wrecked the whole community. Unless ibis was the work of enemies the
inhabitants generally survived, and at once set about rebuilding their boma.
Bulldozers and grading machines not being available, no attempt was made to clear
away the wreckage; it was much easier and simples to level out the debris, raising
the original ground level considerably, burying the ruins, and then building the new
house over them. This process was followed often at Troy and on each occasion
the ground level rose two or three feet.
There were other ways, too, in which appreciable contributions to the steady
growth of the mound were provided. Except in palaces or luxurious mansions, floors
were almost always made of earth or clay stamped or trodden hard. There was no
provision for the disposal of rubbish and waste, no regular collection of kitchen
refuse. Everything discarded - bones, unwanted food, broken dishes - was dropped
on the floor indoors or thrown out through the doorway into the Street.
Sooner or later there must have come a time when the floor became so filled with
animal bones and litter that even the least squeamish Household felt that
something had to be done in the way of a thorough spring cleaning. It was normally
accomplished in a practical, effective way: not by sweeping out the offensive
 Tbt Arcbaeofogical Troy
accumulation on the floor, but by bringing in a good supply of fresh clean clay and
spreading it out thickly to cover the noxious deposit. In many a house, as
demonstrated by the clearly marked stratification, this process was repeated time
after time until the Ievel of the floor rose so high that it was necessary to raise the
roof and to rebuild the doorway. In one house of Troy III at least a dozen
successive floors of chis kind accounted for a rise of some three feet in the ground
Ievel.
It might be added parenthetically that archaeologists always prefer - in their
field work - to meet with housekeeping of this careless type; for every
accumulation that was covered over by a new clay floor is likely to contain many
objects of various categories that were sealed up together, so to speak, in a
dosed deposit, and a sequence of such strata allows a study of development and
progress within a period. On the other hand, tidy housekeeping. as exemplified in
some houses of Troy V, has undoubtedly deprived modern excavators of untold
treasures.
In dealing with Troy of the Bronze Age we encounter a great difficulty which
perhaps ought to be pointed out before we turn to a survey of the physical
remains of the many successive settlements. From the beginning of the First
Settlement to the end of Troy Vllb 1 we have no contemporary written records to
throw light on the history, religion, social organization, economic life, and other
aspects of Trojan culture. In Mesopotamia and Syria vast numbers of day tablets,
bearing records in various languages in the cuneiform script and other, have
given abundant information on details of life in all its tnany facas. In Egypc, too, a
mulütude of documente on stone or papyrus has come to the aid of the
arducologist and hip torian. In Crac and Greece alto day tabicts have bcen
brought to light, one kind writtcn in a script called Linear B in an carly form of the
Greek language, as demonstratcd by Michacl Ventris. When thcy have bcen fully
ir.terpreted thcy will belp tnuch toward an understanding of the bureaucratic form
of administración and the cconotnic system of the Mycenacan world. But at Troy
not a single document has bcen found.Iv/**
Tro
y
This does not necessarily mean that writing was unknown: records
rnay have been kept on wood or on other pcrishablc material which
has vanished without leaving a trace; or, if inscribcd on tabkts of
unbaked clay, the latter may not have had the fortune to be
accidentally baked and preserved in an otherwisc destructive fire, as
happened at Knossos and Pylos.
Without written documents, in any event, the only source of
Information available in an attempt to reconstruct the history and
tnanner oflife ofthe Trojan pcople is the material brought to light by
the cxcavations, the ruins ofthe walls and buüdings of the succcssive
scttkments, and all the various and sundry objeets recovcrcd from
the scqucncc of layers in the debris. Difficulties present themsclves
hete, too; for cxact records from the carly campaigns, when most of
the digging was done, are scanty and incomplcte. The pottery and
other objeets of Troy I could for the most pan be recognised; but in
his Catalogue of the Schlienwnn Colkclion, Hubert Schmidt was
unablc to diffcrz entiate with certainty the pottery and most of the
other material from the layers of Troy II, III, IV, and V, all of which
had to be lumped together as an enormously large group
representing a long era.
After Dorpfcld’s cxcavations of X893 and 1894 the character of
Troy VI stood out clearly, and its general contemporaneity with
Myccnae and Tiryns was fixed, though rclativcly little had survived to
represent its achicvements in art. Ñor had the several phases of Troy
Vlla, Vllb 1, and Vllb 2 becn fully distinguished.
In the absence of written records, there is thus at Troy for all
petiods preccding the Eighth Scttlement a total lack of indez pendent
evidcncc for dating the succcssive layers and strata with any sort of
precisión. The formidable depth of the deposit and the great number
of the principal divisions and their many componcnt subdivisión*
must incvitably be intcrprctcd as pointing to a long chronology, but
they do not tell how long;

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 Tbc Arcbacological Troy
and therc are no fixed dates that stand by themselves. The only
course !eft to us is to compare thc objccts found at Troy with thosc
from other places, which have an esublished chronology of their
own, and with which therc might have been commcr^ cial or other
connections. At almost al! sites imponed objccts are occasionally
found and therc was cvidently, in some insunccs, at least a mutual
exchange of goods. In soch circunv suncos synchronisms bctwccn
thc two rcgions may be validly esublished, but only if thc exact
findzspot in thc stratificauon at cach end of thc comparison and for
each objcct is accurately observed and rccorded. Very fcw of thc
objccts found in thc carly campaigns of cxcavation of Troy can mcct
this test.
So far as thc Early Brome Age is conccmed, no Trojan objccts have been
reponed as found in Egypt, and no Egyptian objccts are known from Troy. In
Central Anatolia and in Cuida some charactcrisucally Trojan pots or imitations of
thern have been recovcred; but thcy may be taken to show only a general
jynchronism, for thc types represented have a long period of use at Troy, extending
through ten or xa, or even more pluscs - probably thrce or four centuria - and more
precise dating is prccluded.
With the Cycladcs thc Trojans apparendy had more intinv ate contaos: distinctivc
objccts from the nlands - obsidian, marble idols and vessels, bone tubes and other
artifara, and pottery - malee their appcaranct relatively fredy at Troy, and a fcw
Trojan pots of cqually distinctivc shapes are known from Syros as wcl! as from thc
Gtctk mainland. Thesc rclations with thc Acgcan continucd to be maintained in thc
Middle Brome Age, probably more intensívely than befóte, but therc seerns to have
been a falling oflf in intcrcoursc with thc East. In any cvcnt, so far as is known to
me, not one single Hinite impon has been rccognised from any stratified deposit at
Troy, and convcrscly, charactcristic Trojan objeets have not been found in deposits
at the principal Hñtitc centres.