Troy: Archaeology of Archaeology

Methods

Summary

The project Archaeology of Archaeology at Troy tries to combine two different research methods: archival research of publications and field documentation and fieldwork.

The excavations at Troy have been documented in a multitude of field notebooks, diaries, drawings and maps, photographs and digital databases. These are available at a variety of institutions around the world: Gennadius Library in Athens (Greece), Tübingen University (Germany) and Cincinnati University (USA). Copies of most of the materials are availabe near the site of Troy at the Korfmann Center in Canakkale. We will access these documents to see what formal policies of documentation were and where dumps and re-filled trenches are located. This research will give us insight in what was documented and collected.

The fieldwork will be done in re-filled trenches and dumps. We will choose specific trenches that were re-filed in order to study structures documented by the excavators and compare the remains to the notebooks. Dump materials are also of interest, since they show what was discarde, Te field research shows what was NOT documeted and collected

Challenges

The difficulty in this research will be to relate backfilled trences and dumps to specific excavation campaigns. We know where most of the dumps at Troy are and it will be possible to distinguish those from the 19th century from those of the 20th century. However, it is a challenge whether we are able to connect dumps and discarded material to specif excavation seasons. We expect that detailed study of the field documentation wil reveal a few places, (preferably one or for every main excavator), where we can connected field documentation, dump and backfill.

Pre Analysis Plan

The whole project is built around a specific set of questions:

- what were formal methods of collecting and documenting?

- What was documented in the field?

- What materials were collected for study and pubication?

- What ended up in publication?

- What was not documented?

- What was not collected?

The data collected from the desk research and the excavations, will be used to answer these questions for every group of excavation campaigns (i.e. Schliemann's campaign's, Dörpfeld's campaigns, Blegen's campaigns, Korfmann's campaigns). next, the questions and their answers will be subject to synthetic analysis on the extent to which they have been of influence for academic and public interpretations at Troy.