BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES 53-2 EDITOR: MIKE EDWARDS

MANAGING EDITOR: RICHARD SIMPSON

BICS-53-2

BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES

2010

INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

128 BICS-53-2 – 2010

© 2010 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

9 December 2009

BETWEEN THE AEGEAN AND ANATOLIA: THE SHIFTING CHARACTER OF TROY IN THE MIDDLE

AND LATE BRONZE AGE

PETER PAVÚK 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 (Blegen’s 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 (Blegen’s 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 ware’s 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 (Blegen’s 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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© 2010 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

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 Beşik 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.