BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES 53-2

EDITOR: MIKE EDWARDS

MANAGING EDITOR: RICHARD SIMPSON

BICS-53-2
2010

BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES

INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES

SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

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BICS-53-2 2010

9 December 2009

BETWEEN THE AEGEAN AND ANATOLIA: THE

SHIFTING CHARACTER OF TROY IN THE MIDDLE
AND LATE BRONZE AGE
PETER PAVK
The new excavations under the directorship of the late M. O. Korfmann, now led by
E. Pernicka, have generated a wide array of data concerning both the site of Troy itself, as
well as its surrounding area within the Troad. Detailed study of pottery, depositional
processes and stratigraphy, from both the new and old excavations, has led to a new
understanding of the Trojan development in the Middle and Late Bronze Age.
It is now possible to differentiate four ceramic phases of Troy VI, with Troy VIIa
joining as a fifth one. These can in turn be connected with the Blegen Phases and enable
us to correlate the sequences in the lower town trenches with those in the citadel.
To have a starting point we must begin with Troy V. Now re-dated to the beginning of
the second millennium, it represents the typical MBA of western Anatolia, with its mostly
wheel-made burnished red-slipped pottery. As for architecture, Troy V shows
agglutinative construction, and fits well with the Anatolian evidence. There is no hiatus
between Troy V and VI, and the ceramic Phase 1 of Troy VI (Blegens VIa) represents
both a transition and a new start. It witnesses the introduction of wheel-made grey ware,
somewhat ambiguous in its character, showing Aegean shapes such as Lianokladi and
Pteleon goblets along with Anatolian shapes such as Bead Rim bowls. Aegean influence
goes back to an MH III impact from central Greece, which reaches not only Troy but also
Chalkidiki and the gulf of Izmir, yet remains restricted to the coast alone. A few imported
sherds also point to the southern Aegean. The break with Troy V traditions is gradual and
in terms of architecture seems to be represented by occurrence of free-standing houses.
With the Phase 2 (Blegens VIb/c), we enter the LBA at Troy and the ratio of the grey
ware reaches 30%. Aegean shapes disappear completely and all of NW Anatolia receives
typical two-handled ribbed bowls. By now, if not already during Phase 1, the wares name
must definitely be acknowledged as Anatolian Grey Ware and should be treated separately
from Grey Minyan of the Greek mainland. In this phase, Troy shows very strong contacts
with the nearby island of Samothrace, which in turn has interesting links with Crete. Troy
continues to receive some southern Aegean imports but does not seem to be the subject of
Cretan interest. The citadel has two rings of terrace walls indicating two different levels
and a number of free-standing houses on both of them.
Phase 3 (Blegens VId, e, f) should be contemporary with LH IIA and IIB and shows
yet a different pattern. The grey ware becomes the predominant ware, the local pottery
shapes change once again and remain clearly NW Anatolian in character. The
Samothracian connection wanes, but we see increased imports of matt-painted wares of
unknown origin, along with the first pieces of Mycenaean decorated pottery. Sherds of
possibly Milesian and Dodecanesian origin point to a communication route down the
West Anatolian coast in this period. The terrace walls around the citadel are rebuilt
several times, resulting in the construction of a major fortification wall to be completed

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only in the next phase. The ditch around the lower town is likely to have been built at
around the same time as well.
It is only in Phase 4 that we can really speak of stronger Mycenaean impact on the Trojan
material culture and even then it is not as overwhelming as Blegen tried to suggest. One
interesting aspect is the imitation of Mycenaean shapes in local burnished wheel-made
wares; however, looking at the frequency of their occurrence (based on the Blegen counts),
it becomes clear that only few of them were really popular and even those are not exact
copies of the proper Mycenaean prototypes. The cemetery of Beik Tepe, the possible
harbour of Troy, may have been exposed to stronger Mycenaean impact and preserved also
some imported pithoi, which would have been otherwise too heavy to transport inland to
Troy. Other than Mycenaean pottery, the imports at Troy are not very numerous in this
phase, the only exception being Cypriot pottery. Troy VI ended in a major burned
destruction, but seems to have been resettled by the same stock of people, and the material
culture of Troy VIIa (Phase 5) remains in the same tradition, showing however a strong
tendency towards different management of labour investment. The production increases but
concentrates only on a handful of shapes, with only one of the very common ones being of
Mycenaean origin. As for proper imports, since the majority of Mycenaean decorated
pottery is locally imitated by now, sherds from Cyprus, and the eastern Mediterranean in
general, match well with the occurrence of Anatolian Grey Ware on Cyprus and in the
Levant in this period, which as we know from NAA now comes from Troy.
Except for Phase 2, when imports from the nearby islands reach almost 10%, the
imported pottery never exceeds 2-3%. Admittedly, when we do have imports, they are from
the Aegean, which is in a way logical because of the easy access across the sea. The Troad is
cut off by the Ida Mountains to the east and pottery was certainly not a suitable product for
transport under such conditions. While it is likely that Troy exercised control over the
copper and silver ores in the Troad, there is no proof of it either, except that a number of
ores were exploited already in the EBA, as shown by chemical analyses. The small finds are
not very numerous and rather ambiguous, given our almost total lack of knowledge about
this category of finds from inland western Anatolian sites, represented only in surveys and
then too mainly by the pottery. Intriguing evidence exists only for transfer of certain aspects
of weaving technology, again from the Aegean. Notwithstanding all of this, for most of the
time, Troy VI and VIIa represent local facets of the NW Anatolian cultural province and one
has to discard generalizations in terms of Aegean versus Anatolian.

2010 Institute of Classical Studies University of London