Troy VII - VIIa

VIIa

The city of the archaeological layer known as Troy VIIa, which has been dated on the basis of pottery styles to the mid- to late-13th century BC, lasted for about a century, with a destruction layer at ca. 1190 BC. It is the most often-cited candidate for the Troy of Homer and is believed to correspond to Assuwan Wilusa known from Hittite sources dating to the period of roughly 1300–1250 BC.

These dates correspond closely to the mythical chronology of Greece as calculated by classical authors, placing the construction of the walls of Troy by Poseidon, Apollo and Aeacus at 1282 BC and the sack of Troy by the Greeks at 1183 BC.

Troy VIIa appears to have been destroyed by a war, perhaps the source of the legendary Trojan War, and there are traces of a fire. Partial human remains were found in houses and in the streets, and near the north-western ramparts a human skeleton with skull injuries and a broken jawbone. Three bronze arrowheads were found, two in the fort and one in the city. However, only small portions of the city have been excavated, and the finds are too scarce to clearly favour destruction by war over a natural disaster.

Until excavations in 1988, one of the problems with this identification was that Troy VII seemed to be a hill-top fort, and not a city of the size described by Homer. The 1988 discovery of a small section of a possible city circuit wall enclosing a much larger area suggests a city "at least ten times larger than earlier excavators — and thus the broader public — had supposed".