Excavations at Troy
Importance of Troy
The story of Troy was of great significance to both the Greeks and Romans, for different reasons. The Greeks viewed it as the last episode in an era of heroes, and migrants from the islands built a small town on the hill of Hisarlik near the entrance to the Dardanelles and named it Ilios, believing it to be the site of the original Troy. The Romans took over the city, enlarged and beautified it, and called it Novum (New) Ilium, because traditionally the founder of their capital Rome was none other than Aeneas, the only one to escape unscathed from the fall of Troy.
Whereabouts unknown
The city of Troy was abandoned in the early centuries of the Byzantine Empire, which by that time had adopted Christianity and did not regard highly places associated with the polytheistic beliefs of the Greeks and Romans. The legend of Troy lived on but the site lay covered with weeds. Fast forward to the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. Scholars started to wonder whether Troy really existed. Where was it? Aristocrats, admirals and mapmakers flocked to the Troad (the area around Troy) with the Iliad in hand trying to locate it. The hill of Hisarlik, known as the site of Ilium, was a late contender, only given serious consideration in 1822 by Charles Maclaren, the Scottish journalist, who published his ideas in a dissertation on the topography of the plain. Others poo-pooed the idea and kept looking elsewhere.
John Brunton’s exploratory dig (1855-56)
John Brunton was the engineer responsible for building the world’s first ever pre-fabricated hospital (designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel) at Renkioi (Erenkoy) during the Crimean War (1854-56). With the hospital due to close and a hundred or so idle soldiers on his hands, Brunton set them to work excavating several ancient sites nearby including Novum Ilium to keep them occupied. As a result of the day’s activity they found some nice classical objects and took them away. It was more like a day treasure-hunting and details of this dig are rather perfunctory.
First Finder – Frank Calvert (1863-1865)
The Calvert family arrived in the Troad in the 1830s. They were not visitors. To them, the Troad was their home. The family lived in the area until 1952 when Edith Calvert passed away. Familiarity with the surroundings led one of the brothers, Frank Calvert, to believe Hisarlik was more important than it looked. He purchased half of the hill and dug some trial trenches in 1863-65, uncovering different strata, and what he found confirmed his suspicions. But he was unlucky. A shipping swindle involving his brother Frederick Calvert, who was tried and sent to prison, put a black mark on the family and Frank couldn’t get sponsorship for a full-scale excavation. He was always short of money anyway.
Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations (1870-1890)
Then along came Heinrich Schliemann in 1868, on a tour of the Mediterranean, also looking for Troy like all the others. This time it was different. Schliemann was a self-made millionaire with pots of cash to spare and willing to devote the time and resources to uncovering ancient Troy, if it could be located. Frank Calvert took him straight to the spot - Hisarlik. Initially taking advantage of Calvert’s local knowledge and nose for classical sites, Schliemann started excavating illegally in 1870 with an unauthorized dig. Then, having been granted permission by the Sultan in the form of a firman, he continued digging and hit the jackpot.
The relationship between these two gentlemen grew frosty. Over time, the generous, rather naive Calvert disagreed with Schliemann’s methods and interpretations but the shrewd, street-wise Schliemann held the trump card. It was he who was bankrolling the dig. He was an outsider in the area and did not feel beholden to the local authorities. And since Schliemann was now an American citizen, wasn’t Calvert, the US consul at the Dardanelles, obliged to render him assistance when necessary? In the end, Schliemann took the glory and the treasure and modest Frank Calvert, author of only a few articles in scholarly journals, was relegated to a footnote in history.
Schliemann’s excavations are summarized below.
Schliemann’s Troy excavations – a Chronology
First Campaign (1871, 1872, 1873) Schliemann set to work with official sanction and a hundred plus workers and dug the famous “Schliemann’s Trench” (1871) right through the hill. He also found the so-called “Priam’s Treasure” (1873). Settling the court case with the Ottoman government for smuggling it out of the country delayed further excavations.
Second Campaign (1878, 1879 and 1882, 1883) Now Schliemann was assisted by the noted anthropologist Rudolph Virchow (joined team in 1879) and the architect Wilhelm Dorpfeld (joined in 1882). They injected a more serious examination and interpretation of the finds.
Third Campaign (1890) Schliemann had achieved world-wide fame but some scientists were still skeptical. Schliemann held an International Troy Conference at Troy itself with a cache of academics from Europe and America. Dorpfeld led the actual excavations, Schliemann became ill and died. (For an appraisal of Schliemann and his life story, see “Who was Schliemann?”)
Dorpfeld’s excavations (1893-1894)
Dorpfeld continued for two more seasons, sponsored by Schliemann’s widow in 1893 and Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1894. By now the momentum and money had run out. Excavations were discontinued. But the two years’ work was very worthwhile. Dorpfeld’s great achievement was to reveal Troy in its entirety, uncovering much more of the city wall, buried under a thick layer of earth and overlain by later city remains. He established that there were ruins of 9 cities altogether, rather than 7 as Schliemann had thought. Dorpfeld also drew a plan of the city in 1904 that was unprecedented. This plan has since been updated and is displayed prominently at Troy. After Dorpfeld left, visitors came to the site but no further relics were discovered. During World War I the Calvert Farm was used as telegraph station and a machine gun post mounted in the ruins of Troy. German officers stationed nearby visited the ancient city.
University of Cincinnati (1932-1938)
The holy grail of Troy excavations is to uncover and conclusively identify Homeric Troy, when the Trojan War took place. In pursuit of this elusive aim, a team from the University of Cincinnati in the US under Carl Blegen returned to the spot once more. Over seven consecutive seasons they systematically divided the city, formerly of 9-10 layers, into 46 levels and began to suspect that the Troy of Priam was early Troy VII and not late Troy VI. (This issue is still unresolved.) After the Americans left, the site was left to the squirrels and butterflies for fifty years.
Korfmann and Rose, Tubingen & Cincinnati (1988-2005)
Like Schliemann and Blegen before him, Manfred Korfmann took the Iliad as his reference point for the excavations, a case of trying to make the facts fit the mythology. But he was more cautious in his approach, carrying out trial excavations at Besik Bay between 1982 and 1987 to explore the area around before putting spade to earth in the already much-excavated inner city itself. In 1988, a new multi-national team led by Korfmann from the University of Tubingen in Germany recommenced digging at Troy, sponsored by Mercedes-Benz, as it was then. The cooperative venture consisted of the University of Tubingen team together with the University of Cincinnati under Brian Rose, plus specialists in their field from about ten other countries, altogether 50-70 academics with some local laborers.
Every summer for 2-3 months the archaeologists have toiled under the sun carefully excavating selected areas of the site. The results of each year’s work are published in the annual “Studia Troica”, which began in 1988. New developments can be followed at the “Troia-Project” web site (www.uni-tuebingen.de/troia/eng/). Mercedes-Benz became Chrysler-Daimler and is now Daimler – still the main sponsor. Siemens and local Canakkale companies such as Akcansa, the cement giant co-owned by Heidelberg Cement, also chip in with sponsorship money.
The most exciting finds from the Korfmann era are the outer defensive ditch delineating the lower city in ancient times, located thanks to satellite imaging, and also a cave, a fresh water source for thirsty Trojans in the summer. Alas, Manfred Osman Korfmann died in 2005 but he laid his stamp on the excavations and the Korfmann Library in Canakkale (opened in 2007) holds his personal collection of archaeology books, donated as per his will.
A much acclaimed mega exhibition of 800 Troy artifacts, “Troia – Dream and Reality”, opened in Stuttgart in 2001 before travelling to other German cities.
Ernst Pernicka (2006 onwards)
Korfmann’s colleague Ernst Pernicka took over the mantle as Director of Excavations at Troy the following year. Efforts at the moment are focused on finding the necropolis (graveyard) of Troy.
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