A new international archaeological project will be launched in Troy in the summer of 2013, under the guidance of University of Wisconsin-Madison classics Professor William Aylward, who has taken part in many excavations of classical antiquities, including Troy.
The prehistoric city of Homer’s Iliad, Greek mythology and epic poems, the passions of Helen, Paris, Achilles and Hector, once again enters the forefront of archaeologists’ attention, who hope to shed more light on the city and its people. The team consists of archaeologists and other scientists, while the project is to be conducted under the auspices of and in cooperation with Turkey’s Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. which is situated near the site.
“Troy is a touchstone of Western civilization,” says Aylward according to the official press release of the American University. “Although the site has been excavated in the past, there is much yet to be discovered. Our plan is to extend work to unexplored areas of the site and to systematically employ new technologies to extract even more information about the people who lived here thousands of years ago.”
The team aims at answering essential questions on the identity and life of the Trojans, the locations of their cemeteries and their writing system, as well as the everlasting question of the Trojan War and whether it did really occur. The new scientific techniques and methods will help the scientists obtain data from chemical and genomic analyses.
Troy is deemed as a fundamental site for questions about the development of civilization in Europe and the Near East. “Troy deserves a world-class archaeological program,” says professor Aylward. The new University Wisconsin-Madison expedition to Troy builds on years of existing work and international collaboration at the site.
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