The great city of Troy - Aegean archaeology and reconstruction of settlements

A warm welcome to everyone! Especially to those who still await new posts. After a long silence -
lasting for several years - I finally managed to secure enough free time to continue my research into
Minoan matters. This time we shall explore a brand-new question: How accurate are the restorations
of Bronze-age cities - if they are based on excavations of their citadels only?

A few years ago as I was travelling through Turkey, we paid a visit to numerous historical sites: from
the Neolithic to the Ottoman era. Of these many, one ancient city stands out - because both of its
fame and its relatedness to the civilizations across the Aegean. This is the city of Troy, known to
Greeks as Ilion. Compared to the impressive hellenistic ruins found elsewhere in Asia Minor, the site
of Troy does not offer much to the average tourists. Apart from the few Roman-era remains dotting
the hillside, there is very little to be seen. Except for the foundations of earlier cyclopean wallings.
However, the building stones seen deep on the bottom of the trench dug by Schliemann betray the
lengthy history of this township.

Something that surprises even people educated in ancient history is the high age of this
archaeological site. The region of Troy was probably first settled in the Neolitic. Eventually it grew
into a village, then a town. As early as in the 3rd millenium BC, it already had a fortified citadel with
stone buildings. Schliemann's excavations unearthed some of the wealth that looters did not take.
"The golden jewels of Helen" actually belonged to a noblewoman who lived in the age when the
Pyramids of Gizah were built! As early as 2600 BC (Troy, layer II), it was already a modest
settlement with over 2000 inhabitants, spreading far beyond its citadel on the plains. Troy lay at the
crossroads of ancient trade routes - both overland and naval ones. This gave the city a high level of
prosperity rarely seen in that period. Remember, that long-range trading already began with the
Sumerians. Some of the jewellery found at the excavation of Ur (southern Iraq) had lapis lazuli insets
stemming from the mountains of Badakhshan, Afghanistan. The route between these two locations
is more than 3000 km (1900 miles) long, and must have taken several months for ancient trade
caravans to complete - if there was ever a direct connection. Similar lapis lazuli objects were also
discovered at Troy itself, implying a fairly "globalized" trade network of luxuries, even in that early
era.

We still have a lot to learn about this period. But it looks certain that Troy (the so-called "maritime
Troia" culture) was an exception, rather that the rule. In the earliest Bronze Age, much of the
western Aegean was still severely lagging behind the ancient Near East in development. The great
"palace" of Knossos was built only a millenium later. The Lion Gate of Mycenae is approximately
1300 years younger, than the walls and gates of Troy II!

 Walking around the archaeological site, there is but one thing disturbing the mind. The excavated
area is just too small for such a prosperous town, and we are not even talking about Homer's Troy. It
is expected to be a local power, yet there are no more than perhaps half a dozen buildings within the
walls of Troy II. Built some 600 years later, the walls of Troy VI form a somewhat bigger circle. Even
so, the visible remnants of Troy VI or VII consist of less than a dozen or so buildings. Somewhat
unimpressive for those having read Homer's the Iliad (of watched its modern recreation, made in
Hollywood).

After the era of high prosperity in the 3rd millenium BC, Troy II was destroyed by fire. But the site
continued to be inhabited, even if impoverished. Layers III and IV document several centuries of
history, when Troy was apparently disconnected from the major trade routes of the world. Starting
from the early 2nd millenium BC (Troy IV and V), the town increasingly fell under the influence of the
advanced Anatolian cultures in the east. With the coming of the Late Bronze Age, the walled citadel
of Troy was rebuilt again, in a more grandiose way than ever before. Thus Troy VI - roughly
contemporary with the palatial complexes of Minoan Crete - was more than a match for the
neighbouring Anatolian or Mycenaean city-states. From the Hittite archives, we can deduce that the
town was probably called Wilusa, and was possibly a capitol of a local state Taruisa (ancient Greek
Ιλιον [Ilion] and Τρωας [Troas], respectively). Wilusa could have been a member or an ally to
the "League of Assuwa", a confederacy of lesser city-states in Western Anatolia (c.f. ancient
Greek Ασια [Asia], Linear B A-SWI-JA). Its very existence bothered the Hittite great kings and
Mycenaean warlords alike.
 Where could the rest of the city been? Some fairly recent excavations have finally managed to
answer this question, by unearthing the outer walls of the settlement, lying far beyond the citadel hill.
Troy was a major city of its time and occupied a much larger area than just the hilltop fort. The lower
city - the main settlement itself - was several times the size of the archaeological site open to
tourists. It has been recently estimated that Troy VI had roughly 10,000 residents. Troy was a great
city for its age; even if it was a dwarf compared to the largest Mesopotamian or Egyptian cities, like
Babylon during Hammurappi's reign (>60,000 residents) or Avaris, capitol of northern Egypt (up to
100,000 inhabitants).

Clearly, this under-estimation of Bronze-age settlements is not restricted to Troy. The castle
of Mycenae encloses no more than a dozen stone-walled buildings; and must have been supported
by a major town surrounding its impressive cyclopean walls. Similarly, the Cretan city
of Knossos was much more than just the "palace" (the actual city-centre): Some reconstructions
depict the excavated buildings lying in a grove of cypress-trees, while this could not be any further
from the truth. The outer walls of Knossos (yes, it had walls!) were only found a few decades ago,
giving a more realistic impression on how big this city once have been. Knossos was the largest of
the excavated Minoan and Mycenaean settlements, with an estimated urban population of 40,000
people.

But if Troy was so large, with well-developed trade relationships and an elaborate culture, why did it
lack writing? All the great cities of the era had complex administration systems with written archives:
Just think of Mycenae, Knossos, Hattusa or Ugarit.  Together with many others, I firmly believe that
the Trojans actually did have scribes and recorded their everyday economy and deeds on clay
tablets - like all other civilizations of that time. But for some reason, the archives did not survive after
the fire that destoyed the Bronze-age city of Troy VI. The architectural history of the Trojan citadel
gives the critical key: the upmost sections of the Troy VI-VII citadel are not preserved at all!

It was not even Schliemann, who removed these sections to expose earlier settlement layers (Troy I-
II), but the ancient Greeks themselves. During the hellenistic era, when Troy was rebuilt, the Bronze-
age citadel was practically levelled to make place for Greek temples (such as the poorly-
preserved Temple of Athena, whose white marble fragments still dot the site). The builders also
expanded the hill by systematically dismantling the ruins and using them as landfill, to increase the
area of the elevated platform. If the main archives were indeed located in the upmost buildings of the
citadel (a likely scenario, in comparison with Pylos and Knossos), then their remnants were
irrevocably destroyed in the process. Or perhaps the archaeologists should look for the clay tablets
(or rather, their weathered fragments) in the classical-era landfills used to expand the citadel area.
Who knows what future excavations might yield there?

With no surviving local archives, one is left to guess what language and writing system the ancient
Troyans used. They may not have been restricted to single script, either. A well-preserved Luwian
seal, pertaining to a scribe hints at the Anatolian character of Wilusa. But other finds were also
uncovered at the earlier excavations. Among them, two vessels bearing crude markings that might
(and just might) have been Linear A. These latter finds were even interpreted as a distinct "Trojan
script" by some, with Aegean origins. But building a theory on these sparse findings is pointless: We
have to wait until more inscribed objects are discovered.