The Ancients - Troy

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Often thought of as an ancient, mythical idea, immortalised in the works of Homer, it's hard to imagine Troy as real place. But when Heinrich Schliemann started excavations of the city in the late 19th Century, our understanding of the ancient world would change forever. Troy stood for over millennia, and in that period was destroyed and rebuilt time and time again. So what do we know about the real people who lived there, and what does the modern archaeology tell us?In today's episode Tristan is joined by Professor C. Brian Rose, the James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, to take us through this city's magnificent past. Looking at the people who first occupied the settlement, through to the modern age beauty contests that still take place on the surrounding slopes, there's a wide breadth of history to be covered. So what really happened during the Trojan War, if it actually happened at all?

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, this is a blinder. We're talking all about the mega ancient history topic that is Troy we're not talking primarily on the Trojan war of the epic poem the Iliad and other epic renditions of that story from the late bronze age of course reimagined in the 2004 I believe epic Troy we're talking about Troy the city Troy the ancient settlement what has the archaeology revealed about this settlement over the ages for over some

3,000 4,000 years of history well to explain oh I was delighted to get one of the leading lights on this a professor who has worked on Troy, who has excavated at Troy for more than a decade. His name is Brian Rose, Professor Brian Rose. He currently works at the University of Pennsylvania and this interview was epic. Brian takes us from the beginning of the Bronze Age down into the Byzantine period explaining the many different layers of settlement at Troy, and whether the archaeology has revealed an epic Trojan War, or, as you're going to hear, whether there were many of them. So without further ado, to talk all about Troy, here's Brian. Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

My pleasure. Thank you. Now, Troy. Brian, when someone mentions the word Troy, people immediately, we think of the Homer and the Trojan War, but archaeology, the work done at the site has revealed so much about the actual Troy and the longevity, its long occupation in ancient history. Yes, that's correct. The Troy is, of course, an archaeological site located in what is now northwestern Turkey at the entrance to the Dardanelles or Hellespont, which connects the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara. And there you would find a mound rising about 17 meters above the surrounding area that

encompasses nine cities, one built right after the other, spanning a period of nearly 4,500 years. Wow. Okay. Well, let's try and cover as much of this history, this ancient history, as we can in the next 40 minutes or so, Brian. As you've highlighted today, it's not just one settlement, various levels of occupation. When do most of these sites date to? Well, the earliest layer of habitation, the earliest settlement, dates to about 3000 BCE, possibly a little earlier than that. The last one is really a Byzantine settlement, very small, only about 500 people, dating to the first half of the 13th century CE.

Wow, okay. And before the first settlement at Troy, do we have evidence for human habitation at this really important area of the, I guess, the Near Eastern Mediterranean world predating it? We don't have any earlier evidence for habitation at Troy. There is evidence in the surrounding area at the site of Kumtepe and what would later be called Acheleion, there are small settlements that all seem to have banded together to create a new unified settlement, which we call Troy, about 3000 BCE. But there's no earlier evidence for habitation on that mount prior to that date. Well, you said there are nine different settlements, so let's start going through them. And let's start with number one.

Let's go to roughly 3000 BCE. What is the archaeology at the site revealed about this first Troy? Well, the first Troy we would call, of course, Troy I, or that's what Heinrich Schliemann, the archaeologist who excavated at Troy in the 1870s and 80s, called it. We don't have an extensive amount of Troy I that survives because, of course, there are eight or nine cities built directly above it. So it's difficult to uncover a large area of it. But we do have the fortification walls, which were built of stone and phenomenally strong for that period, as well as a series of what we call long houses and built one right next to the other with party walls. we call long houses, and built one right next to the other with party walls. This was a period when there was a protective lagoon coming in off the Dardanelles all the way up to the area where the

site would be founded. It is now silted up about eight kilometers. But originally, when the site was founded, it had a phenomenally strategic location because boats that were moving into or out of the Dardanelles, if they experienced inclement weather or phenomenally strong winds, they could simply sail into the lagoon that led up to the site of Troy and wait out better weather and then move back into the Dardanelles. So I think the site was probably founded where it was because of this protective lagoon that subsequently has silted up about eight kilometers, as I said, over the last 5,000 years. Wow.

And from this very, very early period in Troy's history, you mentioned we've got the walls there, so fortified from a really early point as well, which is fascinating in its own right. Do we have any artifacts from Troy I, apart from that, the archaeological, the architecture, or is it, as you say, that we don't know too much? We have a great deal of pottery from Troy I. We have one stone stele, or vertical slab of stone, which seems to be the head of a warrior with weapons.

be the head of a warrior with weapons. That's more or less all we have from Troy I. It was best excavated right in the center of the mound by Heinrich Schliemann in the early 1870s. In other areas of the mound, you know, we have well-preserved remains of Troy II, Troy VI, Troy VII, and because they're so well-preserved, we can't exactly take them up and look underneath them to find Troy 1. It's always a problem with multi-period sites like Troy. What do you leave preserved and what kind of story do you want to tell to the visitors? You ideally have to leave elements of each of the settlements preserved in order for visitors to understand the complexity of habitation at that particular site. Well, there you go. Well, you hinted at it there. Troy II. This seems to be a big step forward with a lot of archaeology surviving. Brian, take it away. Troy II. So what do we know?

This feels like a big jump forward from Troy I, at least that we know of. Yeah, Troy II, or the early Bronze Age settlement of Troy, dates to a period from about 2500 to 2300 BCE. And this is a much more advanced stage of habitation, a much more advanced architectural configuration for the citadel. The diameter of the walled citadel was about 100 meters, a little more. And within it, there were two stone paved ramps leading to the most important buildings of the city, including one megaron, a kind of mansion with a large room and a vestibule that all in all is about 35 meters long. This is a phenomenally large space with a hearth in the center that was clearly intended for some sort

of elite communal activities. Most of Troy II was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s, and when he excavated the area at the top of one of the stone paved ramps within the citadel, he found a stone-lined cist or box in which was a phenomenal treasure, one of 20 treasures that he would ultimately find on the citadel. The most elaborate of these treasures, which contained gold, silver, bronze, lapis lazuli, a dark blue stone from Afghanistan, carnelian, a dark red stone from the Indus Valley in Pakistan, amber from the Baltic, just a phenomenal

assemblage of material. This he christened the treasure of Priam, the legendary king of Troy, because he found this cyst surrounded by blackened earth and some burned beams of wood. And he assumed that was indicative of an attack on the city. And at that point, he thought, he was thinking simplistically, that if he had evidence for an attack on the city, that must be the Trojan War. And this must be the jewelry associated with one of the elite women of Troy. Priam's wife Hecuba or Cassandra or Helen were someone of that realm. And so when he published the hoard, which he had smuggled out of the Ottoman Empire and ultimately to Germany, he christened it the treasure of Priam

because he thought that this treasure had provided the proof that he was looking for, that Homer's story of a war between Greeks and Trojans was not a myth, but rather a fact that had taken place at this city. Now, he realized toward the end of his life that the date that he gave to that war, 2400 BCE or so, was a thousand years too early for a period that would have witnessed armed conflict between the Greeks and the residents of Anatolia, what is now Turkey. So he knew he got it wrong before he died. But for most of his life, he assumed that the Trojan War was an early Bronze Age war, 2500 to 2300. And this treasure was an assemblage that was directly tied to that war.

Well, we'll definitely get more into that, you know, the actual Trojan War as we progress through the Bronze Age. It is a fascinating discovery, isn't it? And the whole story of Troy too. Quickly, a bit more on Troy too before we go even further. So you mentioned the Megaron and these ramps that you have from Troy too. But what also seems to strike me is that, do you know much about the actual people who lived at Troy at that time, the everyday people? Was there a residential part of this settlement? There probably was a residential part of this settlement? There probably was a residential part of the settlement, and it was in the lower city, in all likelihood. This is an area south of the main citadel. And when we excavated there, we used a technique called remote sensing,

which involves magnetic prospection or electric resistivity, tomography, radar. There are a variety of types of remote sensing that we used. And we excavated down to bedrock and found cut into the bedrock the cuttings for a wooden palisade, a protective fence or barrier that would have offered a level of security to those who were living south of the main citadel. This is undoubtedly the residential district. And so what that told us was that there were two lines of defense for the early Bronze Age city. To attack it, you would have had to have gotten beyond this wooden

palisade wall, well attested by these cuttings in the bedrock that we found. Then you would have had to have run 200 meters to the north and scaled a five meter high fortification wall of stone in order to access the most important buildings of the city where you would have found these phenomenal treasures, gold, silver, bronze, carnelian, lapis, etc. And it's worth pointing out that these treasures are not really unique. You get a lot of cities in Western Asia Minor, Central Asia Minor, and the Middle East in general, where they displayed treasures of this sort. One thinks of the Royal Tombs of Ur in southern Iraq, what is now southern Iraq, that was jointly excavated by the British Museum, the Penn Museum, and the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and

Heritage between 1922 and 1934, with Agatha Christie, one of the members of the excavation team. There too, in the royal tombs, there's a collection of gold, silver, bronze, lapis lazuli, and carnelian, very similar to the so-called treasure of Priam and of the same date, about 2400 BCE. Wow. The fact that you've got connections stretching from the Baltic to the Indus River Valley to Pakistan, you've got amazing treasures like Priam's treasures you've highlighted, and you've also got this sophisticated layout, you know, not one wall but two. What does this all suggest, therefore, about Troy's importance, even at this early stage in the early Bronze Age?

therefore about Troy's importance, even at this early stage in the early Bronze Age? Well, the treasures that Schliemann found on the citadel are indicative, as you say, of the enormous or the long-distance trade routes of which Troy was a part. So stretching from the Baltic to the North Aegean, because we have these treasures on Lemnos, the northern Aegean island of Lemnos, to Troy, to the area around Hattusha, the capital of the Hittite kingdom in central Turkey, to southern Iraq, to the site of Ur, all the way to northeastern Afghanistan, the region of Badakhshan today. So we tend to think of long-distance trade networks as not being quite this complex 4,500 years ago, but the discoveries at Troy and Ur proved that they were just as complex as they would be in later times.

Absolutely fascinating indeed. So, but what ultimately, therefore, do we think happens to this settlement layer of Troy? What do we think ultimately happened to Troy too? Well, there was a fire that destroyed many of the buildings of the citadel. Before that happened, before the end of Troy II, there was in the middle of Troy II some additional disturbance that destroyed this enormous megaron that I've just mentioned. The entire thing burned down. And it looks as if people moved within the protection of the citadel walls and some of the elite buildings were destroyed and a new elite building built on top of that. Schliemann called it the house of the city king and it was next to that house of the city king that one of the treasures,

the treasure of Priam, was found. We don't know if that is indicative of the fact that a group of people who had been ruling Troy were overruled by the citizens of the city, and then there was a political change and one man became ruler of the city. That's something that's believed by many. But there was some sort of conflict, armed conflict, which yielded destruction on the mound about 2400 BCE. And thereafter, people were concerned about security and sought refuge within the citadel walls. Then comes some additional destruction. We don't understand it very well. It doesn't look as if it was an attack about 2300, but there was certainly destruction. And the next levels we get, three, four, and five, are not very well understood. For those levels, the population was not as great

and the city was not as prosperous as it had been in Troy too. So Troyys III, IV, and V, as you highlighted there, so what time frames are we talking with these? We don't know as much about these next levels. When in time are we talking? So this is Middle Bronze Age, the period from 2300 to about 1800 BCE. And then following these three levels, if we get to Troy VI, do we almost see another resurgence of Troy at this time? Yes, Troy VI is the strongest of the Bronze Age phases. I've used the term Bronze Age several times. This is the period from 3000 to 1200 BCE, roughly speaking. So with Troy VI, the Late Bronze Age, the second millennium city, we reached the strongest of the Bronze Age phases, one that would last from about 1800 to about 1300, when there would be a major earthquake,

it seems. And then they would rebuild, same population, but the configuration of the citadel would change somewhat in the wake of the earthquake. But Troy VI, no question, the strongest that Troy would ever become during the 4,500 years of the earthquake. But Troy 6, no question, the strongest that Troy would ever become during the 4,500 years of its history. So go on then, Brian, take it away. So what key features made up Troy 6 in its urban layout to make it such a bastion of Bronze Age power? Well, here too, you have a dual line of defense, two different lines of defense protecting the city. There was a bedrock cut ditch about 400 meters south of the main citadel and probably a wall on the interior side of the ditch, although that's more conjectural. Then around the most important buildings of the citadel rose fortification walls of stone that were about 10 meters high and between four and five meters thick.

So these are phenomenally strong fortifications for a late Bronze Age city. We don't have a lot of information about the buildings in the center of the citadel during the Troy VI period, because Schliemann dug away much of this. He was convinced that the Trojan War was the early Bronze Age settlement, and so he dug through the upper levels very quickly without recording as meticulously as he might. But we know a lot about Troy VI, not just from the archaeology, but from the clay tablets that have been found in Hattusha, the capital of the Hittite kingdom in central Turkey. We only have found one piece of writing of Bronze Age date at Troy. This is a bronze seal dating to the 13th century BCE,

and it just gives the name of a man identified as a scribe and the name of a woman on the reverse who may be his wife. It tells us nothing about history. But in the course of the last 25 years, we've been able to determine that the Hittite reference to the name Wilusa is a reference to Ilion or Troy. This has been ascertained only in the late 1990s with certainty. And so we can look at the tablets, of which there are many, at Hattusha, the Hittite capital, examine the references to Wilusa between the period of 1400 and 1200. We have several of them. And that gives us an overview of what Troy or Wilusa was doing in the late Bronze Age. So we learn that Troy was part of a rebellion of cities against the Hittite kingdom at the end of the 15th century,

the so-called Asuwa rebellion or the Asuwa coalition against the Hittite king. Asuwa is probably an antecedent of our word Asia. And the Hittite king, a man named Tudhalius II, crossed to the west and defeated the Assua coalition. Thereafter, Troy seems to have been allied with the Hittite king. Although it was in the wake of the Assua rebellion at the end of the 15th century that they built the strongest of their fortification walls and cut this bedrock ditch around the lower city, the residential district for late Bronze Age Troy. In later periods, we have evidence for continuation of the alliances between Troy and the Hittites. There's one very interesting one from about 1275 that is a treaty between the Hittite king Muwatalli II and a man named Alexandu, ruler of Wilusa.

Alexandu was the Hittite word for Alexandros. Now, Alexandros is a Greek name and the second name for Paris, whom everyone knows of from the Iliad. So with this tablet, we have evidence for Alexandre, ruler of Wilusa in 1275, i.e. Paris, ruler of Troy in 1275, who was allied with the Hittite king. Is he the son of a dynastic marriage between Greeks or Achaeans or Ahiawans, as the Hittites said, and Trojans. That's conceivable because he has a Greek name, Alexandu. And then in a later period, we have evidence for a king of Troy who was thrown out of the city by his fellow citizens, a king named Walmu. This is about 1220. And we also have in the tablet in question a reference to the Hittite king wanting to put him back on the throne of Troy. So from this, we learn that there was some kind of civil war at Troy around 1220.

The king was thrown out but not killed. And he obviously was a man who pursued a pro-Hittite policy because the Hittite king wants to see him put back in place. The Hittite king wants to see them put back in place. Then we have a destruction about 1190, 1180 BCE that does seem to have been the result of armed conflict. We have piles of slingstones, blackened arrowheads, blackened earth that's about five feet in height. The best evidence is from the southwest side of the site, but clearly there was armed conflict. best evidence is from the southwest side of the site, but clearly there was armed conflict.

Nevertheless, if we look at that zone of armed conflict, there's not enough in the remnants of the conflict to tell us who the combatants were. Was it an attack by foreigners? Was it a civil war? Was it an attack by foreigners after the civil war had weakened the city? This is still to be determined. Aeroplanes, spacesuits, condoms, coffee, plastic surgery, warships. Over on the patented podcast by History Hit, we bring you the fascinating stories of history's most impactful inventions and the people who claim these ideas as their own. We uncover exceptional stories behind everyday objects. We managed to put two men on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases. Unpack invention myths. So the prince's widow immediately becomes certain. Thomas Edison stole

her husband's invention and her husband disappeared around the same time. Can only have been eliminated by Thomas Edison, who at the time is arguably the most famous person in the West. And look backwards to understand technologies that are still in progress. You know, when people turn around to me and say, oh, why would you want to live forever? Life's rubbish. I just think that's a bit sad. I think it's a worthwhile thing to do. And the thing that really makes it worthwhile is the fact that you could make it go

on forever. So subscribe to Patented from History Hit on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to catch new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. Brian, so much to delve into there. I'd like to focus a bit more on names, first of all. You mentioned these Hittite tablets and the name Alexandros, but you also mentioned how we've only got one piece of writing from Troy itself. I mean, do we know of many figures, actual Trojans, dating to this Bronze Age period, or is it only just a few? Well, it's a few. Maybe we'll determine that there were more at a later point as more tablets are found. But we have Alexandou or Paris in the early 13th century. We have another tablet from the Hittite capital that speaks of an attack by an Achaean commander, a Mycenaean Greek commander, or as they say, Ahiawan commander, named Ataricia.

This is the early 14th century. So Ataricia, or in Greek, Atreus, crosses the Achaean, makes a hundred chariots, and goes to war against the Hittites in Western Asia Minor. So this is another name known from mythology. We also have a tablet called the Tawagalawa tablet that dates to about 1250 BCE. This was also excavated at Hattusha, BCE. This was also excavated at Hattusha, wherein the Hittite king writes to a ruler of a Mycenaean city in Greece and refers to Wilusa as an area over which we quarreled. So this has often been interpreted as a kind of smoking gun for the Trojan War. Certainly, Troy was caught up in armed conflict between the Greeks and the Hittites, the first of the great wars between East and West.

And other vassal states in Western Asia Minor were caught up in the same conflict. Was there a war at Troy in 1250 BCE, the date of the tablet? We don't have any evidence for that archaeologically, but the tablet indicates that there was some sort of conflict between Greeks and Hittites at Troy in the 13th century. Tawagalawa is the Hittite word for Ateocles, which is another Greek name, the brother of Polonices, known from mythology. So as time goes on, we're learning that a number of these characters from mythology are actually based on Bronze Age antecedents, even though they weren't all from the same period. So in that case, Brian, could it be, so with the Trojan War, we think, you know, the Greeks on one side, the Trojans on the other side as the enemies, the main enemy. But in the

historical basis for that could potentially be, from the archaeology, that Troy is almost this middle ground, this meeting place between this power in the west crossing over the Aegean Sea and the mighty Hittite power in the east. Yeah, the western coast of Asia Minor has always been a liminal area, looking and negotiating with east and west while choosing to be identified exclusively with neither one. You can think of the situation in the late 6th, early 5th centuries BCE with the Persian Wars, where the region was torn between Greek alliance and Persian alliance. And the wars, of course, encompass that entire area in the early 5th century. Or you can think of the Mithridatic Wars in the late

2nd, early 1st centuries BC, where again, you have a liminal zone between Mithridates in the East and the Romans in the West, or for that matter, the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, which is the last of the great East-West wars in this particular region. It's always been a liminal zone, I suppose, largely because it signals the easiest crossing point between continental Europe and Asia. So it has elements of Europe and Asia throughout its history, and you see that in the tablets at Hattusha dating to the late Bronze Age. A lot of these vassal states in Western Asia Minor were alternately allied with the Hittites or with the Achaeans, the Ahiawans, during this period from 1400 to 1200. And so it's really not surprising that we have a ruler of Troy in the early 13th century with a Greek name.

And so, Brian, with all of that archaeology, the amount that we know so far, how credible is it to therefore put forward that the historical basis that there was a mighty siege of Willusa, of Troy, between Mycenaeans, maybe with Hittites on the other side and Trojans, that there was this great siege of Troy that occurred in the late second millennium BC. And that historical basis was then romanticized, mythologized over the following centuries, which ultimately comes down to famous epic poems like the Iliad today. I think it would be fair to say that there are a number of Trojan Wars during the Late Bronze Age. So between 1400 and 1200, Troy and the other cities in Western Asia Minor were

continually at war, either with the Ahiawans or with the Hittites or with both, or with some Anatolian commanders that seemed to be allied with the Ahiawans. So you have 200 years of war in Western Asia Minor, of which Troy was a part, involving a multitude of combatants, again over a period of 200 years. Over time, after 1200 and before the 8th century, those stories of 200 years of war in Western Asia Minor involving forces east and west with lots of combatants become modified into a single war lasting 10 years with two primary combatants. But there is an historical basis to the stories that Homer described in the Iliad, there's no question. So that 10 years, as you say, that 10 years, I've never ever thought of it that way. Rather than

one massive titanic war, this is the culmination of a great combining of a series of wars that occurs over, well, decades, maybe even centuries in the late second millennium BC. That's amazing. Well, you can see it with other epics in world literature. The same situation prevails with the Song of Roland or the Nibelungenlied, which are describing earlier conflicts that are heavily embroidered by the time they're actually written down. The Trojan War and the Iliad are no different. Well, one last thing on Troy 6 before we go on. So just give us a sense of this Troy at that time. How large a settlement do we think from the archaeology it is by this stage? Well, we haven't excavated much of the lower city, which is the residential district. We've

only excavated 2% of it. So it's difficult to provide a population estimate. My colleague, Manfred Korfmann, who was the director of Troy during the 25 years that I worked with him at Troy, believed that the population of Troy and the surrounding area was between 5,000 and 10,000. But that's based on very little, because again, we've excavated very little of the residential district. little, because again, we've excavated very little of the residential district. What I can say is that there was an earthquake around 1300, and many of the residents in the lower city moved within the protection of the citadel walls. The same thing might have occurred in the early Bronze Age, where we get an increase in the number of houses built on the citadel. But clearly, after the earthquake in 1300,

they were concerned about their security. So they moved within the citadel. What had been broad streets were now occupied by hastily built houses. There were large storage vessels or pantries, which we call pithoi, that were inserted into the floors of the houses. There was a water-bearing cave

that was contained within the lines of fortification so There was a water-bearing cave that was contained within the lines of fortification so that people had access to water. And clearly there was concern that there would be an attack, especially in the wake of the earthquake having weakened the city walls. And we know that there were these attacks. There are plenty of references in the Hittite tablets that refer to them. And I should add, just as a final note on Troy 6, that we know about what was happening in Western Asia Minor and the region around Troy, not just from the tablets in the Hittite capital at Hattusha, but also from some of the linear B tablets, an early form of Greek that were excavated at the Mycenaean Palace of Pylos in southwestern Greece, now being excavated by the University of

Cincinnati, and excavated by the University of Cincinnati also in the 1950s and 60s. And they found one tablet dating to about 1200 that provides a list of the women who were seized from the west coast of Asia Minor and the adjacent islands at the end of the Bronze Age and taken across the Aegean to a Mycenaean palace, that being the palace of Pylos, where they worked in the textile industry. So if you have women seized from Western Asia Minor and taken across the Aegean to a Mycenaean palace, did you also have women seized from Achaea, from Mycenaean Greece and taken across the Aegean to a palace in Western Asia Minor? It's not inconceivable, and this may have given rise to the Helen story. To the Helen story, indeed. And I was actually always thinking

of Euripides' The Trojan Women as well, which I no doubt will get more to that homerizing of Troy as we go on. But as you said there, okay, let's wrap up with Troy 6 and move on to Troy 7. Because Brian, what happens at this city, this large settlement, as we reach the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the first millennium BC? Well, I've been describing Troy 7 as I've been describing Troy 6. There's really no difference between these two cities. They're separated by the earthquake of 1300. So you have Troy 6 from about 1800 to 1300, then comes the earthquake, then you get rebuilding of the walls after the earthquake. That ushers us into the period that we call Troy 7a. That's the period in which Alexandu was the ruler of Wilusa or Ilion or Troy. That's the period when you have the residents moving within the protection

of the citadel walls with their pantries. And then at the end of 7a, 1190, 1180, we do get evidence for armed conflict. And then after that, the population of the city decreases considerably. We'd know more about these people if we had found or if we could find the cemeteries associated with those phases of habitation, and we've never found them. This is one of the great conundrums of excavating at Troy. We should be able to find the cemetery of late 6-7a, so the cemetery of the 13th century and the early 12th century. We should be able to find it with remote sensing, but we've never been successful in doing so. This is something that archaeologists of the future will have to determine or have to find. Sorry to interrupt there. I mean, what, so we

all know, what exactly is remote sensing? What is this tool that you have at your disposal? Many of your listeners will have gone to the hospital and will have gotten an MRI. That is remote sensing. So magnetic resonance imaging, or magnetometry as we say, which involves the use of a machine to measure variations in the magnetic fields of buried objects. Once you download that information, you'll get a printout that will present those anomalies in graphic form. Those anomalies could be a tumor in your body, or they could be buildings and streets that lie unexcavated beneath the surface of the earth. It's the same idea. We also use radar for the same purposes, and then something called electric resistivity, which shoots electrical impulses into the earth, and they'll bounce back at different speeds depending upon what's still buried beneath the surface of the earth. So in a way, you're X-raying the region where you're working to get an idea of what still lies buried.

So it can take the guesswork out of archaeology. And it was remote sensing that revealed to us the presence of this rock-cut ditch 400 meters south of the main citadel of Troy. Got it. Thank you for allowing me that interruption to just a quick question about that. But we'll go back, therefore, to the original chat where you were saying there. So, surprisingly almost, we haven't found the cemetery of Troy VI of Troy VIIa, which hopefully in the future, future generations of archaeologists will be able to find to then learn more about the actual people of Troy during this period. Yes, exactly. At what age did they die? What were the diseases that were in force at the time? Surely there was plague in the late 14th

century because we have tablets from the Hittite kingdom where the king of the Hittites looks up to the gods and says, what have I done that you have visited this plague upon us? All of my people are dying. So clearly there was sickness, but we'd like a little more evidence for that from the cemeteries themselves. Were there men who died in their 20s buried with armor? Did they sustain battle wounds? There's an enormous amount that we can learn if those cemeteries were to be found.

Well, okay, let's continue the story, because you've mentioned a Troy 7a. So I'm guessing, therefore, is there a Troy 7b? What is the whole shape of Troy as we therefore do reach the first millennium BC and the dawn of the Iron Age? Well, we have no idea how many people died in this armed conflict. We only have a few bodies. That's to say the conflict of 1190, 1180. We only have a few bodies that have been found.

It may be that there were refugees who left the city for other regions. We don't know where those regions are, although one gets a sense of what the refugees may have been waiting for boats in the 12th century BC. In that same area, you now see Syrian refugees waiting for boats that will take them to Lesbos, one of the nearest islands, and thus to Greece and thus to the European Union. So whenever I see Syrian refugees in the area of northwestern Asia Minor, northwestern Turkey, I think of the refugees from Troy at the end of the Bronze Age. Some then refugees, some people stayed. There was never a time when the city was completely uninhabited, but the prosperity that had once been in place there was gone. Population went way down, and the city in what we call Troy 7b2, this would be the

second half of the 12th century, the city receives a new wave of immigrants from southeastern Europe, people from the Balkans. It looks as if when the Hittite kingdom collapsed, and it collapsed at the same time as this armed conflict at Troy in the early 12th century. At that time, the Hittite king loses its power, and that seems to have opened up new commercial corridors between Europe and Asia Minor. So you get Balkan traders and eventually Balkan immigrants crossing the Dardanelles and crossing the Bosphorus, where Istanbul is now located, and settling in Asia Minor, some of them settling at Troy. This is about 1130. And the settlement remains very small. We don't have evidence for extensive trade

again until the 10th century, where we start seeing what we call proto-geometric pottery that indicates trade with the North Aegean and probably with Macedonia. And it's not until the late 9th or 8th century that we start seeing sanctuaries form at Troy. And in one of the sanctuaries, we have a late Bronze Age building that is brought back to life, that is rebuilt with an altar. And this is the period when the Iliad was being formed. So it may be that there was worship of the Homeric heroes at Troy already starting in the late 9th or 8th centuries BCE. So the archaeology is therefore suggesting this is potentially when the mythology, the romancing of Troy, it starts to take root. And as mentioned, you can see that from the archaeological remains. Yes. If you read the pages of the Iliad, what's described is Troy.

The geographical situation is that of Troy, the Ida Mountains, the islands of Imbros or Samothrace. Clearly, the geographical setting is that of Troy. Now, when Troy was associated with these stories is hard for us to tell, but by the 9th century, the city where this conflict occurred is identified as the ruins of Troy, where the ruined Bronze Age citadel walls continue to stand. They were visible throughout Troy's history. So at some point, someone connects these stories to Troy. 11th, 10th century, we can't exactly say, but by the 9th century, they're there and are written down as such in the 8th century. End of the 8th century is when the Iliad is first written down, and it is squarely associated with Troy. And so it's probably in the 8th century. End of the 8th century is when the Iliad is first written down, and it is squarely associated with Troy. And so it's probably in the 8th century that the Homeric hero cult

really gets going at the site of Troy. And how does this almost revive, maybe that's the wrong word, but how does this affect Troy, therefore, in the following centuries as we get nearer and nearer the time of, let's say, archaic Greece and then classical Greece? Yeah, so the archaic period, the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Starting in the 7th century, we have references to a tradition that we call that of the Locrian women, where women from Locris in Greece, aristocratic women, were sent from mainland Greece to Troy with the charge of cleaning the sanctuary of Athena at Troy as a way of atoning for the sins of their ancestor, Ajax, who had raped Cassandra on the altar of Athena at the end of the Trojan War. So this looks as if ritual activities based on the Homeric accounts were in place by the 7th century BC. These women are coming across the Aegean from Greece to atone for the sins of Ajax. So by that point, the Homeric hero cult and its

associated tourism is up and running. And it is probably in this period that abandoned settlement mounds of Neolithic or early Bronze Age date are rebranded as the tombs of the Greek and Trojan heroes who had fought in the war. So it's all a part of rebranding or a kind of homerization of the surrounding landscape as the tourism industry becomes more and more dominant. And that, of course, would lead to some high-profile visits to Troy because they wanted to see where the Trojan War had occurred. And so Xerxes, the Persian king, stops at Troy in 480 BCE on his way to sack Greece and reportedly, according to Herodotus, sacrifices a thousand oxen to the Homeric heroes. And then

150 years later, Alexander the Great stops at Greece in 334 on his way to destroy the Persian empire and also make sacrifices to the Homeric heroes. The site could market itself to forces both east and west because, of course, it was in this liminal location that embraced both east and west. This is an ancient tourist attraction, and I just love the fact how the archaeology, the actual potential story of what Alexander and his companions perceived to be the tombs of Achilles and Patroclus. As you say, the historical truth behind that could actually be that these were Stone Age Neolithic tumuli that are rebranded even more than 2,000 years ago to become the tombs associated with these Homeric heroes. That's a fascinating thing to consider in itself. Well, as in any tourism industry, what you're advertising doesn't have to be true. It

just has to be marketed properly. And it was no different 2,700 years ago. So in regards to during the Iron Age, when it becomes this tourist attraction in ancient history, is there still a prominent settlement of Troy there and people are living there? Because I'm thinking that when the Persians take over this part of the world, Troy is not one of their satrapal capitals. You get the horizon of the kingdom of the Atalids following Alexander's death, and they focus on Pergamum. They don't have Troy as their center. As we get to the Iron Age with the late Troys, Troy 8, Troy 9, I'm guessing, are these settlements notably smaller, less significant than its Bronze Age predecessors? Yeah, absolutely. The archaic site in the 7th and 6th centuries BC

was a very small site by comparison to what Troy 2 or Troy 6, the early Bronze Age settlement, the late Bronze Age settlement, had been. It's primarily a sanctuary site. So you have a sanctuary of Athena Ilias, who would always be the primary goddess at the site. And then you have another sanctuary on the southwest side of the site that would eventually be dedicated to Sibylle or the Magna Mater, the great mother goddess of Asia Minor. But those are the two focal points of the city. There would have been very few residents in the 7th and 6th centuries, even fewer in the 5th century. It's only in the late 4th century BCE when the Macedonian king Antigonus I makes Troy the capital of a new league of cities in the Troad in northwestern Asia Minor. This is a league

called the Koinon of Athena Ilias. And so the sanctuary of Athena at Troy is the nucleus of that koinon, of that league. And gradually money begins accumulating because of its new political importance as the capital of this new assemblage of cities. And over time, even more money would come in from the Romans, because by about 300 BC, Rome had acknowledged its Trojan ancestry. And so more contributions are coming into Troy, because this is the mother city of the Romans, which is gaining in importance as the centuries move by. And so the Hellenistic site becomes not as important as it had been during the late Bronze Age, but a city to be reckoned with, with a sizable residential district

and some very impressive temples on the citadel. I can imagine that. Yes, everyone wanted to kind of pay homage to the city and leave great buildings there like at Delphi and Olympia and so on and so forth. But what therefore does ultimately happen to Troy, to the ancient settlements of Troy? Well, the site remains strong through the Roman period, again, in part because of the fictive Trojan ancestry of the Romans. And then most of the buildings are destroyed in a crippling earthquake around 500 CE. We're all familiar with earthquakes because of the devastating earthquakes that have recently struck southeastern Turkey. That's the South Anatolian fault. Troy is on the North Anatolian fault. So there have been earthquakes that have struck the city from time to time. I

mentioned that 1300 BCE earthquake and two more crippling ones occurred in 500 CE and bring down the most important buildings. And then people tend to leave the site for the interior. One of the problems at Troy is that the earthquakes disrupted the waterways. Those turned into swamps, which brought in mosquitoes, which brought in malaria. So it was no longer a healthy place to live. And so really, with the exception of a very short-lived Byzantine settlement, Troy is out of existence as of about 500. Wow. Well, congratulations, Brian. In the last 40, 45 minutes or so, we've covered some 3,500, 4,000 years of history, which is insane.

covered some 3,500, 4,000 years of history, which is insane. Troy's incredible archaeological story. You and your team have worked at Troy for more than 10 years. And now you and your team, you are working on another excavation at a similarly extraordinary site also in Anatolia. Yes, this is called Gordion. It was the capital of the Phrygian kingdom. It also is nine cities, one built on top of the other, spanning a period of 4,000 years. And like Troy, Alexander came to the site and cut the proverbial Gordian knot. It was also the capital city of Midas, the king of the Phrygians, who allegedly had a golden touch. Well, something always about nines, isn't it? Nine city layers. That's fascinating. Well, hopefully we'll get you back on in the near future

to talk all about that, Midas, Alexander the Great, naturally, and so much more. But it just goes for me to say now, Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. My pleasure. Good to talk to you.

Well, there you go. There was Professor Brian Rose explaining what the archaeology has revealed about Troy down through the ages. As he mentioned at the end, he's done a lot of work more recently on the Phrygian settlement city of Gordion, linked with Midas and Alexander the Great. Don't you worry, I may need to get Brian back on the podcast in the future to talk all about that incredible Anatolian city too so stay tuned for that in the future now last things for me you know what I'm going to say

if you enjoyed the episode and you want to help out the ancients where you know what you can do you can leave us a lovely rating on apple podcast on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it greatly helps us as we continue to grow our audience, to share these amazing stories from our distant past with as many people as possible, and of course, with yourself. But that's enough from me, and I'll see you in the next episode.