The second week at Troy
The second week of excavations of the Amsterdam team at Troy has now passed. The weather has been fairly pleasant: not too hot and with a nice breeze. In close cooperation with our Turkish colleagues, we have been excavating in three trenches at the site. The atmosphere within the Amsterdam team and with our Turkish colleagues is very good. We have been making good progress and we are beginning to see the first results. So all is very well here at Troy.
The two trenches that were set out last week have been continued. Nina Magdelijns carries out an extremely difficult excavation in a dump thrown up by Dörpfeld. With the workmen, she is tackling it in the manner of a Near Eastern tell excavation: with steps and platforms. The result so far has been an enormous amount of finds, which are now being processed. Meanwhile, Fleur Van der Sande has dug out Blegen’s test trench so deep that she needs a ladder to get in and out. Among the finds that she has been collecting, there seems to be an exceptional quantity of animal bones.
Vita Gerritsen began last Monday to excavate at an exciting spot. In the center of the citadel, there is a curious hill of earth, which we have termed The Bump. It is in the middle of an area excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870’s and we hoped that it was one of his dumps. Shortly after the start of the excavations, however, we discovered that in fact it was a stretch of original soil, which never has been excavated. Reading his reports carefully, it became clear that Schliemann left a ramp here to be able to transport dump materials. Apparently, no-one bothered to remove the ramp afterwards and it was forgotten to result in The Bump. Even if we now leave it alone, Schliemann’s ramp gives us quite some information on excavation methods.
Ailbhe, Bart and Gert Jan are trying to make sense of the excavations trenches and the finds. A serious issue that we are facing concerns our registrations: what aspects are of significance? In normal excavations, we tend to want to know a find’s date, its location and the function. But in Archaeology of Archaeology, these are not so important. Instead, we look how these fnds fit in archaeological classifications then and now. We have many discussions about these matters and gradually our field and find administration is being perfected.
Meanwhile, we have had several distinguished visitors to the project. Wout Arentzen has written several books on Heinrich Schliemann and his work at Troy. We are very eager to compare his thoughts with our finds and he was with us for four days this week, looking for signs of Schliemann’s presence. He was particularly excited with a layer of shells that is mentioned in Schliemann’s 1880 book Troja. Also , we visited several grave monuments in the area together.
Two colleagues from the University of Amsterdam, Mirjam Hoijtink and Gunay Uslu and their children also came by. We had a wonderful day at Troy in the heat, discussing issues such as the date of the Trojan War and the problems and opportunities to excavate in modern Turkey.
The coming week is the last of our summer campaign and we will try to finish the excavations by Wednesday, so we have time to process it all. In the mean time we also succeed in having fun every once in a while. We will keep you updated!
Troy, 12 August 2018
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