New Evidence for Dating the Settlements at Troy

Abstract

Since Schliemann's earliest excavations almost seventy years ago the problem of dating the successive layers of remains at Troy has constantly engaged the serious attention of the interested archaeological world. At first it was hardly more than a subject for speculation, since in the early ‘seventies’ little comparative material was available from other sites and the internal evidence was insufficient for safe chronological conclusions. Schliemann himself thought that the ‘burnt layer,’ first called Troy III, and later equated with the final phase of Troy II, represented the ruins of the citadel of Priam; but his discovery in 1890, at a much higher level in a stratum of Troy VI, of considerable numbers of Mycenaean potsherds made a revision of this dating imperative. It was, however, left to Professor Dörpfeld, after Schliemann's death, to ascertain definitely in two further campaigns of excavation, in 1893 and 1894, that the Sixth and the Seventh layers were those of settlements coeval with the Mycenaean Age, and that they could therefore safely be assigned to the second half of the second millenium B.C. Professor Dörpfeld also put forward the view, which met with general acceptance, that Troy VI was the Homeric stronghold besieged and captured by the Achaeans under the leadership of their sovereign Agamemnon.