bronze age environment and economy in the troad - Universität ...

chapter 1: environment and archaeology
structures which share party walls and are irregular in plan.
The floors of the houses sometimes have pits dug for the
emplacement of large storage pithoi below ground level. Water
supplies within the area enclosed by the walls consist of a well
in a paved, seemingly public court just east of the overbuilt
foundations of House VIF and a large cistern or well in Tower
VI g (see Map 2). Remains of several houses outside the walls
(Houses 740-741 south of the east gate and House 749 at the
southeast) indicate that a lower town of some sort extended
beyond the walls of the citadel in Troy VIIa as in Troy VI.
The material culture of Troy VIIa is almost identical to that of
the preceding settlement, and the residents of Troy VIIa were
therefore presumably the survivors of the supposed earthquake
which levelled Troy VIh (Blegen et al. 1958).
The chief difference between the citadels of Troy VIh and
Troy VIIa lies in the use of space within the fortifications. The
excavators have argued that a greatly increased population
sought protection inside the walls during Troy VIIa,
presumably as a result of some external threat. The
preoccupation of this population with storage space as attested
by the subterranean pithoi has been further interpreted to
reflect a state of siege at the end of Troy VIIa. The violent
destruction of Troy VIIa has been interpreted as evidence of
the failure of Troy’s inhabitants to withstand the siege against
which they had apparently prepared themselves. The mass of
the citizenry would have lived outside of the walls in the lower
town of this period and in small agricultural villages dotted
around the Trojan plain. Perhaps part of the citizenry had
moved within the walls in Troy VIIa, but this change need not
reflect a period of siege and could simply represent a change in
the order of Trojan society. Perhaps Troy VIIa was no longer
ruled by a monarch, while the aristocratic class which had
occupied the mansions of Troy VIh had likewise been
eliminated, as assumed also on the Greek mainland where
palaces disappear as functioning entities at the end of the LH
IIIB period.
Mycenaean trade was decreasing during this period, and this is
assumed to be evidence for a hypothetical siege of Troy by
Mycenaeans. It remains to be established how much of the
‛imported Mycenaean’ pottery from Troy VIIa comes from the
Peloponnese, how much from Aegean islands, and how much
from Mycenaean sites on the coast of Asia Minor itself.
On the basis of the Iliad and Odyssey, the destroyers of Troy
VIIa have traditionally been identified as Mycenaean Greeks
from the central and southern Greek Mainland. Looking to
archaeological evidence, it has been suggested that the
attackers were not Mycenaeans. Many questions in relation to
the discussion of the historicity of the Trojan war are still far
from being solved. For example, are the mainland Greeks
likely to have destroyed Troy at more or less the same time as
their own centres in the Peloponnese were being destroyed
The distribution and origin of specific pottery types (i.e. the
‛Coarse Ware’ of Troy VIIb1) which are assumed to answer
the origin of the sackers of Troy VIIa remain unresolved.
Arguments for and against the historicity of the Trojan war are
both well established, so that belief or disbelief in this war
becomes an act of faith.
Troy VIIb1 (c. 1230/1180-1150 BC) tends to be founded on
walls of Troy VIIa with rebuilt houses. The differences in material
culture between Troy VIIa and VIIb1 seem to be minor.
At the end of Troy VIIb1 there is no sign of any general destruction
level. The duration of Troy VIIb1 is usually estimated
at about half-a-century, largely on the basis of the Mycenaean
imports.
Troy VIIb2 (c. 1150-1050 BC or later) is represented by
modified Troy VIIb1 houses, i.e. the addition of extensions or
the piercing of doorways through party walls, seemingly in
order to increase the size of the individual dwelling units. A
new element in pottery is the ‛Knobbed Ware’, which has traditionally
been taken to represent a new population element in
residence at the site. The ‛Knobbed Ware’ has parallels across
the Hellespont which suggest that its makers may have
migrated into the Troad from Thrace, to which in turn they
may have moved from further west. Most of the pottery
nevertheless consists of the Late Bronze Age Trojan wares
familiar from earlier phases, both Minyan and Tan Wares, so
that much of the population of Troy VIIb2 is usually
considered to have consisted of descendants of the Trojans of
Troy VI, VIIa, and VIIb1. The Troy VIIb settlement was
probably destroyed by fire.
After this, the site of Hissarlik was deserted for as much as
three centuries before Aeolic Greeks reoccupied it in the late
8th century BC at about the time when the Homeric epics, the
Iliad and the Odyssey, were being written down for the first
time.
1.2.2.3 The recent excavations and location of
the archaeobotanical samples
In 1988 the fourth period of excavations started under the
leadership of Korfmann (Bronze Age) and Rose (Post-Bronze
Age) (Korfmann 1991a and 1991b, Rose 1992).
1.2.2.3.1 Early Bronze Age (Troy I-III)
As mentioned above, the excavations brought new understanding
about the chronology of this site, such as the contemporaneity
of late horizons of Troy I with early strata from Troy
II, and the exact dating of the periods by radiocarbon dating
(Korfmann and Kromer 1993). Recently a new chronological
scheme was developed by the archaeologists (Korfmann 1996).
Final Troy I layers (later than Troy Ik) seem to be contemporary
with the first phases of Troy II. Troy III still belongs
to the same line of development in ceramic production and
architecture, so that the three periods have to be considered as
a unity, a material culture that lasted for more than 1000 years.
This epoch is named by Korfmann the ‛Maritime Troia
Culture’ according to its particular distribution-pattern along
the coasts of the Marmara Sea and the Aegean (Korfmann
1996). In 1990 remains of a house outside the Troy II
fortification wall were excavated (D7), along with remains of a
multiphase gate structure belonging to Troy III period.
The domestic architecture of D7 was botanically sampled, and
along with stratigraphical investigation of Early Bronze Age
horizons in trench E3 botanical sampling took place.
The results from these samples are discussed in chapter 3,
where the samples are described in their archaeological
context.
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