Heinrich Schliemann was a German businessman and a pioneer in the field of archaeology. He was an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. Schliemann was an archaeological excavator of Hissarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns. His work lent weight to the idea that Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid reflect actual historical events. Schliemann’s excavation of nine levels of archaeological remains with dynamite has been criticized as destructive of significant historical artifacts, including the level that is believed to be the historical Troy
Further excavation of the Troy site by others indicated that the level he named the Troy of the Iliad was inaccurate, although they retain the names given by Schliemann. In an article for The Classical World, D. F. Easton writes that Schliemann “was not very good at separating fact from interpretation.”
He goes on to claim that “Even in 1872 Frank Calvert could see from the pottery that Troy II had to be hundreds of years too early to be the Troy of the Trojan War, a point finally proved by the discovery of Mycenaean pottery in Troy VI in 1890.” “King Priam’s Treasure” was found in the Troy II level, that of the Early Bronze Age, long before Priam’s city of Troy VI or Troy VIIa in the prosperous and elaborate Mycenaean Age. Moreover, the finds were unique. The elaborate gold artifacts do not appear to belong to the Early Bronze Age.
His excavations were condemned by later archaeologists as having destroyed the main layers of the real Troy. Kenneth W. Harl in the Teaching Company’s Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor lecture series sarcastically claims that Schliemann’s excavations were carried out with such rough methods that he did to Troy what the Greeks couldn’t do in their times, destroying and levelling down the entire city walls to the ground.
In 1972, Professor William Calder of the University of Colorado, speaking at a commemoration of Schliemann’s birthday, claimed that he had uncovered several possible problems in Schliemann’s work. Other investigators followed, such as Professor David Traill of the University of California.
An article published by the National Geographic Society called into question Schliemann’s qualifications, his motives, and his methods:
In northwestern Turkey, Heinrich Schliemann excavated the site believed to be Troy in 1870. Schliemann was a German adventurer and con man who took sole credit for the discovery, even though he was digging at the site, called Hisarlik, at the behest of British archaeologist Frank Calvert. … Eager to find the legendary treasures of Troy, Schliemann blasted his way down to the second city, where he found what he believed were the jewels that once belonged to Helen. As it turns out, the jewels were a thousand years older than the time described in Homer’s epic.
Another article presented similar criticisms when reporting on a speech by University of Pennsylvania scholar C. Brian Rose:
German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was the first to explore the Mound of Troy in the 1870s. Unfortunately, he had had no formal education in archaeology, and dug an enormous trench “which we still call the Schliemann Trench,” according to Rose, because in the process Schliemann “destroyed a phenomenal amount of material.” … Only much later in his career would he accept the fact that the treasure had been found at a layer one thousand years removed from the battle between the Greeks and Trojans, and thus that it could not have been the treasure of King Priam. Schliemann may not have discovered the truth, but the publicity stunt worked, making Schliemann and the site famous and igniting the field of Homeric studies in the late 19th century.
Schliemann’s methods have been described as “savage and brutal. He plowed through layers of soil and everything in them without proper record keeping—no mapping of finds, few descriptions of discoveries.” Carl Blegen forgave his recklessness, saying “Although there were some regrettable blunders, those criticisms are largely colored by a comparison with modern techniques of digging; but it is only fair to remember that before 1876 very few persons, if anyone, yet really knew how excavations should properly be conducted. There was no science of archaeological investigation, and there was probably no other digger who was better than Schliemann in actual field work.
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