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Chapter 2 (part 16)
b. The 2nd period of the VII layer (p.193).
We
do not know why the residents of Settlement VII-1 left their dwellings
built behind the old castle wall. From the state of the ruins we can
only gather that soon another population settled on the castle hill.
The houses from the 1st period were not completely destroyed, but
mostly reused and partly rebuilt. In addition, a large number of new
dwellings were built, which once, as far as we can tell from later
changes, stretched all over the hill. We conclude that it is a question
of a different ethnic group from the completely changed, peculiar
construction, which occurs solely in these new houses in the 2nd period
of the VII stratum, (p.194) The peculiarity consists in the use of
irregular, upright slabs (orthostatics) as the foundation or underlayer
of all house walls..
Walls of this type can be found in all
parts of the castle and we have seen them several times in photographs.
I remind you of photo 2, on which the orthostats of a wall located to
the west of the castle are visible in the left half of the picture
below the workers; photo 25, which reproduces a wall (f) with its
high-edged slabs over Building VI E; fig.59, which shows us the
orthostats (c) of a wall from the southern part of the castle; and
fig.73, which repeats the same wall as in photo 2, namely the southern
wall of House VII upsilon.
 As a particularly characteristic
example, the outside of the western wall of the same building VII
upsilon, the inside of which appears in the background in fig.73, may
be given in a special picture (fig.74). The orthostats here depict the
lowest layer of the wall, which in its upper part is built of larger
and smaller stones with earth mortar. The stone (b) seems to have
belonged to a doorstep. Through the door one looks into the room and
notices in the background next to the worker the western retaining wall
of VI M and in it the mouth of a canal, which was mentioned on p.159.
From this picture it also emerges that the orthostats were completely
or almost completely under the floor as a foundation, because otherwise
the doorstep would be too high.
Fig.74:
House wall from the 2nd period of the VII layer, with
orlhostats (a). In the background, the western retaining wall (c)
of the VI M building.
Plate 6: Plan of Troy ruins from the layers VII and VIII.
All
the walls of this kind which we have found are drawn on Plate 6 in a
lighter tone than the walls from the 1st period of the VII stratum.
They form somewhat smaller and more irregular rooms than the older
walls. Above all, however, they are no longer individual houses
consisting of one room, which have no connection between them and are
only accessible from the outside, but rather larger apartments
consisting of several rooms, which perhaps partly have an open
courtyard in their had middle.
 As a good example I cite the
buildings found near Gate VI S, which are shown in fig.75. The 1st
period walls shown in fig.71 are here left white, while the 2nd period
walls are emphasized by simple hatching. Those of the large buildings
of the VI layer that were probably still standing at that time are
hatched crosswise, those that were destroyed or buried are marked with
dots.
Fig.75: Walls from the 2nd period of the VII layer, next to the east gate VI S.
Although in some walls of the more recent period the former
position of the doors could no longer be determined, and although
therefore not all doors are known, it can be seen from the secure and
only drawn doors that the rooms h, g, f, e, d and i probably formed a
common group, a larger house with several subdivisions.
A
photograph of some of the walls of this house is published in photo 26. It shows us the eastern part of the castle during the
excavation. The large buildings of Layer VI are just beginning to
appear: the light walls a in the right part of the picture are the
upper part of the eastern retaining wall of VI E, and the adjoining
wall b belongs to VI F. Above are several house walls of VII-2 visible
and marked with the letter e. In the left half we see several walls (c)
from the I period of the VII layer; they are still used and rebuilt in
the 2 period. Thus the jutting pillar k is a 2nd period addition; so
also has the wall corner f from the 1st Period at that time received a
porch in the wall g. On the far left at i, a piece of the ring wall of
VIII made of small stones can still be seen, while on the right in the
middle several foundations (d) of layer IX, recognizable by their
regular blocks and their high position, stand out clearly. In the
background on the left you can see the plateau of the lower town with
several oak trees.
Photo 26:
Retaining walls (a and b) of buildings E and F of the VI layer; House
walls (c and e) of the VII layer; Square foundations (d) of the IX
layer.
The
ground plan (fig.75) also shows that the gate S, which still existed in
the 1st period of the VII layer, was no longer usable as an entrance in
the 2nd (p.196). Not only was the inner gateway blocked, but also the
long entrance in front of the gate was divided by several transverse
walls into individual chambers that served as apartments.
 Fig.76
is intended to illustrate the altitude of these chambers and the
construction of their walls, which eliminates any doubt as to their
affiliation with layer VII-2. On the left the eastern castle wall of
the VI layer appears cut and next to it the different floors of this
layer; above the latter one can see a house wall of the 2nd period of
VII with its orthostats. To the right follows the mighty cuboid
foundation of the Roman East Stoa and on the far right the connecting
wall between the gate VI S and the tower VI h, about the age of which
we have made various assumptions above (p. 186).
Fig.76: Section in square K 6, with a house wall from the 2nd period of the VII stratum.
A
house wall of the same type that was found a little further south can
be seen on photo 27 below in the middle behind a worker and
is marked with a (q in Fig.75). However, its characteristic design
cannot be seen in the picture, although it was actually there; instead
we notice three pithoi (b) next to it, which stood in a room next to
the wall and certainly belonged to layer VII-2. Pithoi and walls had to
be removed to uncover the sixth castle wall. They are drawn in plan on
Plate VI. We also see one of the pithoi and a piece of the wall on
photo 28 on the next edge.
In
addition, all the other walls shown in Figure 76 can be found in the
picture of photo 27. We see the large cuboid foundation (e) of the
Roman East Stoa on the left and right in the foreground and to the left
of it the connecting wall (f), which has already been mentioned several
times (p.197) and probably belongs to the 7th layer. To the right,
below the measuring instrument, is a small piece (c) of the eastern
castle wall VI; its continuation to the left is still hidden under the
high masses of rubble and the wall d ; We will get to know the latter
later as the castle wall of the VIII layer. The walls appearing in the
background above belong to layers VII and VIII, insofar as they are
made of small stones, and to layer IX insofar as they are built of
regular blocks.
Photo 27: C
House
walls of layer VII-2 have also been found at another place outside the
VI castle wall, namely in J 8 south of the VI h tower. They form a few
very small rooms leaning against the castle wall. It has not been
determined whether there was an outer ring wall further outside at that
time, which surrounded these houses. As far as we know, there was no
such wall in the south-east, as the existence of a defensible fortress
wall for the 2nd period of the VII stratum is not proven at all. This
is consistent with the fact that gateway S was completely occupied by
houses and therefore there was no longer a gate here.
Only later
in the VIII layer, as I mentioned before, was a defensive wall built
again. It surrounded the remains of the old castle wall VI from the
outside and inside and is drawn like a pavement in the floor plan of
fig.75. The rear parts of rooms b, c, d and h of layer VII-2 and also
the old gateway were filled with small stones, and in this way a ring
wall of considerable strength was obtained.
 In
fig.77 we give a ground plan of the western part of settlement VII 2
near Gate VI U, which reproduces all the walls from this younger period
of Layer VII. Some of these are newly erected buildings, but some are
the same buildings that were shown in fig.72 as houses from the 1st
period. A comparison of the two ground plans therefore quickly informs
us about the changes made at that time, which consisted of the addition
of small chambers (at VII [j, and VII v), consisted in enlarging the
houses (e.g. VII u) and in erecting new buildings (e.g. VII (|; and VII
w). We already have house VII nu above discussed and illustrated in
fig.73 and 74. It had been extended westward by the new occupants.
Fig.77: House walls from the 2nd period of the VII stratum, west of the castle.
The
two houses VII omega and VII psi deserve a special mention because they
differ from the other buildings of their class by the parastade-like
projections with which their front was equipped. You can also see their
plan on Plate VI in square B 7. The projections at the two corners
formed a kind of vestibule of very shallow depth, as we have seen in
building VI C in a similar shape and arrangement. Because of the
high-edged slabs of their walls, there is no doubt that these houses
belong to layer VII-2. For the assessment of the buildings of VII-2,
that agreement is not without (p.198) importance. Whoever wants to
attribute the walls with the orthostats to a people who were not
originally native to the Troad can assume that this ground plan is
influenced by the Troic building method.
It is not known
whether the buildings of settlement VII-2 also extended beyond the
older wall line to the west and south, as we have established for the
east, because there was almost no excavation on this side of the hill
outside the castle of the VI layer . Be that as it may, the many houses
with the remains of the older dwellings formed a large, probably
unwalled, village occupying the whole hill and part of its slopes.
The
younger residents of the 7th layer may have taken their drinking water
from well B c, which was in the 6th layer. layer and still used in the
1st period of VII. However, it is possible that it was already buried
and was no longer known to the residents of the time. (p.199) On the
other hand, according to the finds, it is certain that the large well B
b in tower VI g (in square K4) was still in use at the time of layer
VII-2. At that time its new arched wall was built, which is shown in
plan in fig.51 and in section in fig.53. The floor next to the well was
at that time, as indicated in the latter drawing, at a height of 28.50
m, because there a wall with the characteristic orthostats has been
preserved next to the brick wall of the VI castle. After the collapse
of the VII layer, the well was buried, the floor and the buildings of
the VIII layer passed over it, as well as the large buildings of the IX
layer that were higher up.
It seems that the VII settlement did
not experience violent destruction. The walls of their houses still
stand taller than the ruins of the other strata; only in layer III were
walls of the same height preserved. Although we have found strong burn
marks in several places in the houses, there is no sign of a large
general fire. If you now walk through the ruins of the VII settlement,
you get the impression that the village was not violently destroyed,
but abandoned by its inhabitants. The walls gradually fell into
disrepair and disappeared under the rubble of their roofs and upper
walls.
As will be
described in detail in the next chapters by H. Schmidt and A. Götze, in
the older houses of the VII level almost only those objects were found
which also appeared in the VI level. In the younger buildings and next
to them, on the other hand, in addition to the native pottery, there
were on the one hand "Early Geometric" vase fragments and on the other
hand so-called "humped vases" and objects belonging to them (e.g. the
lost form of an ax of the Hungarian type), which suggest a foreign
immigrant people.
It is not possible to state with certainty how
the occurrence of such diverse pottery in one period of the VII stratum
must be explained. Since we have not arrived at a uniform view of this
question on the spot, I feel obliged, at least briefly, without getting
involved in historical assumptions, to give those attempts at
explanation which are in harmony with the state of the ruins and the
other facts of the pound bring. The starting point is (p.200) the fact
that in the 2nd period there was a change in construction and also
probably a different ethnic group, and on the other hand the find
circumstances of the various household appliances described in chapter
IV.
According to this, it is firstly possible that the owners of
the "early -geometric" vases built the houses of the 2nd period with
the peculiar construction method (orthostatics) and used local clay
implements in addition to their own pottery. After dwelling on the hill
for a while, they may have been driven out by a strange people who
brought with them the humpbacked vases and related objects. These
either settled in the same houses, which only later fell into disrepair
after they left and gradually went under. Or they built over the ruins
of Village VII - its primitive huts of wood and other ephemeral
materials that have left no trace.
Secondly, it is also
possible that the owners of the humpbacked pottery were the builders of
the younger, orthostatized houses; These must then have received the
Trojan and early Geometric pottery from the local population. Whichever
of these possibilities one chooses, in no way, in our opinion, can it
be the same. mixed population, who built the older and younger houses
of the VII layer at the same time.
Some of my co-workers
consider the second possibility to be untrue, apparently, even
impossible, because they do not believe that the makers of such
primitive pottery as humpbacked pottery are capable of building stone
houses with orthostats. However, I myself do not dare to simply rule
out this possibility. However, I would prefer to assume a Greek
population as the builder of the younger houses, because the use of the
orthostats is, as far as we know, a Greek form of construction common
as early as the palaces of the Mycenaean period, and later in all Greek
temples, from the oldest to youngest, has been applied. The "early
Geometric" pottery, which first appears among the inhabitants of these
houses, would then belong to the oldest Greek settlers. I admit,
however, that this type of construction could also have been in use by
another people, and that the Early Geometric vases do not necessarily
indicate a Greek population either.
The dating of layer VII can
be judged at least to some extent on the basis of the various finds, if
we use the finds from the immediately preceding and the following layer
to determine the time limits. The beginning of layer VII, as evidenced
by vase finds, certainly goes back to the time of the Mycenaean
influence. Although it is therefore not impossible that the founding of
the VII settlement fell in the last centuries of the II millennium,
considering the uncertainty of this determination of time, it might be
more advisable to assume the round number l000 BC as the lower limit of
the VII settlement.
The determination of the upper (p.201)
limit is based on the time of the higher, the VIII layer, because the
Early Geometric pottery and also the humpbacked pottery do not permit
exact dating. We let the eighth layer begin with the
"developed-geometric" vases and can therefore assume the year 700 as
the boundary between the seventh and eighth layers (compare H.
Schmidt's explanations in the next section). It seems to us that the
buildings as well as the household utensils and other objects found fit
the seventh layer in the period from 1000 to 700 BC.
[Continue to Chapter 2, part 17]
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