"She has climbed the great Tower of Ilium."

Troy! A generation ago only a few students of the Bible would have imagined that the legendary battle on the plains around Troy would have any connection with the battles of the biblical judges and Saul and David with the Philistines. Today, due to instant transcontinental communication and jet travel, we say that the world is getting smaller. Now too, because of the refinements in archaeological method and the explosion in the number of excavations, we are beginning to realize that what were once thought of as different and distant worlds, the world of the Israelites and the world of the Aegean, clashed in the Valley of Elah with the contest between David and Goliath (1 Sam. 17).

One very important tool for archaeologists is pottery typology. Consider this: modern soda and beer containers have changed in composition, size, shape, label design, and how they open over the past century; we would be able to set up a bottle/can chronology, dating each piece according to its characteristics. The archaeologist is able to set up such a chronology with the pottery of the ancient world. Chapter 4 will detail how this chronology works, but suffice it to say for now that enough artifacts have been recovered at Sea People/Philistine sites on Cyprus and in Israel that archaeologists have been able to set up a chronology of their particular ceramic forms.

Before the ancient Near Eastern empires of the Hittites and the Egyptians broke up in the second half of the thirteenth century B.C., countless sites along the eastern Mediterranean coast traded ceramic forms referred to today as Mycenaean IIIB imports. This designation refers to ceramic vessels that were made in Mycenae or its environs and filled with goods to be traded throughout the Near East. These well-crafted, beautiful vessels are immediately identified by any veteran excavator. The thirteenth-century B.C. breakup of the empires in the Near East and Greece brought a halt to this far-reaching trade. All seasoned archaeologists excavating near the seacoast in Israel or on Cyprus look for an end to Mycenaean IIIB imports, signaling the break between the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age. At numerous sites on Cyprus and in Israel, the pottery that follows this break is a locally made imitation of the imports and is referred to as monochrome Mycenaean IIIC:1b pottery. At a few sites in Israel, this locally made imitation pottery is followed by a bichrome "Philistine" pottery (see pp. 40-41 for details).

Since the 1930s scholarly debate about the mound of Troy has focused on which stratigraphic level of the mound holds the city of Priam and Hector. Is it the level known as Troy VI or the level known as VIIA? To answer this question, I have focused my research on the pottery. Can we find the same pottery sequence at Troy as on Cyprus and in Israel: the Mycenaean IIIB imports (which would cease presumably after the destruction of Troy by the Mycenaeans), followed by locally made IIIC:1b pottery?

The Iliad and the Odyssey make it very clear that there was trade between Troy and the Mycenaean cities in Greece. Helen was taken during one such trip to the Achaean mainland. Would the thirteenth-century Mycenaean IIIB pottery imports have ceased while the Mycenaeans were besieging Troy? If the city was sacked as Homer states and resettled by poor survivors, did the new inhabitants make the local Mycenaean IIIC pottery? These are the questions that need to be considered.

Beginning in 1870, the first excavator of Troy was the famed Heinrich Schliemann, followed by Wilhelm Dšrpfeld. They both believed that Troy VI was the city that Homer wrote about, since it was "well built" and "finely towered" (Vermeule 1972, 275; M. Wood 1986, 113). Due to the findings of Carl Blegen's seven seasons at Troy from 1932-1938, several scholars of ancient Greek history came to believe that Troy VIIA was the Troy of Priam recounted in the Iliad. "Troy VIIa was then Priam's city, and VIIb 1 was built on its ruins by those who survived" (Desborough 1964, 164-65). "It [Troy VIIA] was smaller and more rubbly than before [Troy VI] . . . and in spite of its shoddy aspect is generally felt to be the city Homer sang about" (Vermeule 1972, 276; see also Chadwick 1976, 184-85). Blegen and those who came after him using his excavation reports recognized that Troy VI was a "great city." But they were troubled by the fact that Troy VI seemed to end around 1300 B.C. with an earthquake and by the fact that they saw no evidence of fire, counter to Homer's epic (Vermeule 1972, 273; see Cottrell 1963, 200ff. for Blegen's words). According to Vermeule, Troy VI could have witnessed the earlier raid by the Achaeans mentioned in the Iliad -- the one led by Heracles, who raided not only Troy but went further inland as well, into Hittite territory (1972, 275-76; M. Wood 1986, 164).

When I first began my research about Troy in the 1960s, I too became convinced that Troy VIIA was Priam's city, in spite of the fact that it was Troy VI that had the "wide streets, beautiful walls and great gates just as the Iliad had told" (M. Wood 1986, 91). It was Troy VI that had the luxury goods. One holdout for Troy VI at that time, I remember, was O. R. Gurney, whose words about Troy VI as well as the evidence that the practice of cremation was widespread there, fit well with the demise of numerous heroes depicted in the Iliad (Gurney 1952, 168-69; M. Wood 1986, 168).

However, the pottery chronology that we utilize in our work in Israel made me reinvestigate my earlier conclusion. If Troy had Mycenaean imports, at which level did these imports end? Secondly, what type of pottery followed the imports? Blegen appears to agree to the sequence of pottery in our chronology, "but," he cautions, "to convert it into a specific year B.C. is another matter on which one finds no close agreement among the specialists" (1975, 163).

Imported Mycenaean pottery and other imported goods have been found throughout Troy VI (M. Wood 1986, 91). The luxury imports on this level other than ceramics are of such a quantity that Blegen, too, believed that trade of this extent implied a direct route between Mycenae and Troy. But such trade between Mycenae and other cities ceased around 1250 B.C. (M. Wood 1986, 164). Therefore, I agree with Blegen concerning the date for the demise of Priam's Troy -- circa 1250 B.C. -- but I believe that Priam's city was Troy VI, not VIIA (Blegen 1975, 163). Troy VIIA was, as Vermeule describes it, small, rubbly, and shoddy, with a shantytown, and as M. Wood states, it had "no imported luxuries, and few (if any) sherds from imported pots -- mainly poor imitations of Myceanaean wares [emphasis mine]" (1986, 115). The shantytown, with its locally made Mycenaean imitations, fell around 1180 B.C. (M. Wood 1986, 224).

Wood goes on to answer the earthquake question posed by Blegen. Troy VIIA appears to have had no royalty. None of the great or royal houses appear to have been utilized in accordance with their original function, thus pointing to an earthquake destruction of Troy VI. In its weakened state Troy VI was attacked, its royal house was killed or enslaved, and the succeeding Troy VIIA became a squatter town. Wood also cites evidence that Troy VI was indeed burned, as the earlier excavator Dšrpfeld documented (M. Wood 1986, 91). Weapons of war were recovered as well (M. Wood 1986, 227-28; see also Blegen's words on the fire in Troy VI in Cottrell 1963, 201). The dates of 1250 B.C. for the downfall of Troy VI and then 1180 B.C. for the destruction of Troy VIIA fit in well with the movement and destruction of the Sea Peoples as they migrated through western and southern Anatolia towards Cyprus and Egypt.

One further question about Troy VI is significant to this discussion. What did the Trojans trade? The Iliad mentions the horses of Troy, and the quantity of horse bones found in Troy VI bears witness to this. The extensive artifacts associated with textiles suggest another means of support. A third item of export seems to have been ceramics known as Grey Minyan ware, or Trojan ware (Blegen 1975, 161-63; M. Wood 1986, 165-66). This type of pottery was common throughout the region at the time; therefore, it is difficult to come to any definite conclusions about where it was produced. To my knowledge, neutron activation tests on it have not been completed. Grey Minyan ware/Trojan ware has been found at other sites in Palestine, Syria, and Cyprus, and we have recovered such sherds at Tel Miqne-Ekron dating to the second half of the thirteenth century B.C. This pottery will be discussed further in chapter 4 (M. Wood 1986, 71-72, 86-87, 165-66; Buchholz 1974, 175-87).