Digging Up Troy | Hacker News Reader

Digging Up Troy

laphamsquarterly.org

50 pointspepys12 comments

Eric Cline, the author of the piece, wrote the book "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed", a book on the bronze age collapse I found very interesting. In the 1980's, the BBC produced a series called "In Search of Troy", written and presented by Michael Wood, the historian. Cline brings this up to date with Manfred Korfmann's findings from the 1990's, expanding the size of Troy with the "lower city" and adding much to our knowledge. I think the BBC series can be found on YouTube and is worth watching still, as it covers a lot of the same ground. I wish Schliemann had been more careful.

I can confirm the series are interesting, just purchased it on DVD. In the series we learn that the gold from Troy disappeared from german museums during WW2, perhaps forever. But since the end of the cold war it has appearently turned up in a russian museum.

Was it common to really build cities on top of one another? It seems weird to me that one would simply build over top another ruined building. And actually, what did this look like? Did they simply build on top of some rubble? I imagine this happens over a long period of time but I don't know enough to understand. Anyone can explain or send references?

Not an expert, but groundworks are expensive. Building on an existing foundation would be easier. Include the fact that ancient cities were usually founded in advantageous locations (rivers, etc) and the existence of infrastructure (roads, local farmland) then staying put makes sense. In fact, without modern communications, if you moved, no one would be able to find you.

I think that if a disaster destroys your city, moving may be the only option for survival.

These city locations are often abandoned for hundreds of years at a time

I'm no expert on the matter, but I can imagine how it might be possible to maintain address records and update them as required without the aid of electronic communication.

Also, you could move home locations but still go to the same market, tavern, workplace, fields, etc, and be located there, or just tell your old neighbour you moved.

Like The sibling comment from Jarito says - places like Troy are naturally and obviously fortifiable. It's a narrow headland on a peninsula with rivers close by, good fertile land and a massive natural harbour below it. What's more the site is cleared and leveled and there's building materials in place from the previous people who saw it was a good spot to build. You don't dispose of the "rubble", it is used in your walls. (Along with any other stuff lying around, cf The Rosetta Stone).

Short answer, yes.

There is a lot of labor in building things like buildings, much of it is clearing out the land to start building on it. If its already clear of trees and all you have to do is just 'level' it for the first floor, then you'll build your building right on top of the previous one. There are also things like sewers and other parts of the city which are easier to build by essentially building a raised roadway then trying cut and cover.

Now look at the pictures of Aleppo or any other heavily damaged, mostly masonry of some form, city. You've got piles of rubble. Its easier to smooth that stuff out and build again on top than it is to try and haul it all out, re manufacture it and bring it back in.

Have a look a the ruins under the Royal Mile in Edinburgh - it's readily viewable and I'm sure other cities have similar layers under them that you can visit.

It's even still done in the 'modern' day from what I understood from the "Underground Seattle" tour. If memory serves, Chicago did something similar.

In a Roman history class in undergrad I learned that a lot of Roman buildings had been blessed by different pagan priesthoods, so ancient Romans would actually bury the old structures rather than demolish them - so they wouldn't offend the gods. Here's a link describing some forms of building burial in Rome. It didn't mention what I just said, but that ancient Romans tore the roofs off of old buildings and filled them in with dirt. This provided a foundation for a structure to be built on top.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/04/undergr...

Aside from the other factors already mentioned, also keep in mind refuse removal in ancient cities was poorly/not enforced, so that the level of the streets actually rose over the centuries. The result being that if you tore down and old building to build a new one, the natural place to put the ground floor would be inches or even feet above the old floor, leaving the foundations of the old building in place.

Places like Troy, which had millenia of habitation, basically ended up ontop of artificial hills (tels) of the garbage of previous generations.

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