Troy, the city sacked by the Greeks through the deception with the famous wooden horse, will be excavated again at the beginning of 2013 by a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists and other scientists, after being abandoned due to lack of funds, as announced by the authorities on October 15.
The new expedition will be led by Professor William Aylward, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has extensive experience as an archaeologist conducting various fieldwork on classical excavations, including Troy itself.
“Although Troy has been excavated in the past, there is still much to discover. Our plan is to extend the work to unexplored areas of the site and use new technologies to extract even more information from its inhabitants thousands of years ago"Aylward commented.
Troy and the Trojan War were immortalized in the epic poem of Homer ‘The Iliad', But the site itself was occupied almost continuously for 4,500 years, from the beginning of the Bronze Age until the 13th century, when the city was abandoned and came to be considered a myth. It was rediscovered in 1870 by the pioneer of archeology Heinrich Schliemann, whose work laid the foundations of modern archeology.
“Our goal is to add more information to what we already know about Troya”, Stated Aylward, who is developing a complete multidisciplinary team for what promises to be the most complete excavation since Troy discovered more than a century ago. "The archaeological record is very rich. If we can take advantage of the new scientific tools to study the ancient biological and cultural environments, we can find much more information that allows us to tell in more detail the history of this world heritage site.”.
Troy is in present-day Turkey, in the Dardanelles, a crossroads between East and West and a point of great conflict throughout history. The archaeological site is of real complexity, as it has a total of 10 cities, one built on top of the other and dated from prehistory to the Middle Ages, where many of them present clear evidence of violent destruction.
Behind the Trojan disappearance At the end of the Bronze Age, Greeks, Romans and other civilizations have echoed the site, and all agreed that here was the mythical Troy with its great cast of characters: Achilles, Helena, Patroclus, Ajax, Priam, etc., claiming it as their own cultural heritage.
In fact, the ancient city was visited by historical figures of great weight like the Persian General Xerxes, Alexander the Great, or great Roman emperors like August or Hadrian.
Although archaeologists have been digging troy for more than a century (with the exception of 50 years between 1938 and 1988), less than a fifth of all that can be found has actually been excavated. With almost 4,500 years of uninterrupted settlement at a key point on the roads between Europe and Asia, the work in Troy is essential to answer various questions about the civilizations of the region.
“There are important gaps in the knowledge of the identity of Troy in its prehistoric stage, such as the location of its main cemeteries or its archaic writing system."Aylward commented,"although the permanent question about the historicity of the Trojan War is also worthy of further exploration.”, He sentenced.
Image: Public domain
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