The assumption that a Trojan War took place in the so-called Troas at the Dardanelles depends on the belief that there once existed a population called Troes in this region, as the Ilias maintains. However, the Troes in the Ilias do not carry Anatolian, but only Greek and Thracian or Illyrian names; there is no Trojan identity.
Jorrit M. Kelder & Marco PoelwijkGreek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 56 (2016): 572-584
This paper aims to highlight a number of problems involved with current interpretations and identifications of persons in Ta 711, a Linear B tablet from the Mycenaean palace of Pylos, which records a number of objects that were presented on the occasion of the appointment of a da-mo-ko-ro.
In the present paper, the material evidence, in LBA, both for the technological level of Minoan/Mycenaean Greece, mainland-islands-Crete, and the image emerging from the archaeological finds of the wider area of Asia Minor, Land of Ḫatti, Cyprus, and Egypt, are combined in order to draw conclusions regarding international relations and exchanges.
Jed O. Kaplan, Mirjam Pfeiffer, Jan C. A. Kolen & Basil A. S. DavisPLOS ONE 11(11) (open access)
Reconstructions of the vegetation of Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) are an enigma. Pollen-based analyses have suggested that Europe was largely covered by steppe and tundra, and forests persisted only in small refugia.
When we look into western Anatolia in the LH IIIC period, an increase in Mycenaean pottery is observed in comparison with the preceding periods along the coast in settlements like Panaztepe, Liman Tepe, Bademgediği Tepe, Kadıkalesi, Miletos, and Cine-Tepecik.
P. Nomikou, T. H. Druitt, C. Hübscher, T. A. Mather, M. Paulatto, L. M. Kalnins, K. Kelfoun, D. Papanikolaou, K. Bejelou, D. Lampridou, D. M. Pyle, S. Carey, A. B. Watts, B. Weiß & M. M. ParksNature Communications 7 (open access)
Caldera-forming eruptions of island volcanoes generate tsunamis by the interaction of different eruptive phenomena with the sea. Such tsunamis are a major hazard, but forward models of their impacts are limited by poor understanding of source mechanisms.
This paper re-evaluates the place of Messene in the Peloponnesian routes of the first European travellers, prior to the excavations and surveys of the scientific expedition to the Morea (1829), and reviews their contribution to our knowledge of the archaeological site and its remains.
F. Turco, P. Davit, F. Chelazzi, A. Borghi, L. Bombardieri & L. OpertiArchaeometry 58.2 (2016): 284–296
Several plasters and mortars from the Middle Bronze Age site of Erimi – Laonin tou Porakou (Cyprus) were analysed in order to perform a technological characterization.
Eleftheria Paliou & Andrew BevanJournal of Anthropological Archaeology 42 (2016): 184-197
Simulations of spatial interaction in archaeology have been successful in predicting the emergence of central sites, and political and economic hierarchies that match observed long-term settlement patterns. It still remains unclear, however, to what degree such models can effectively allow for uncertainty in the archaeological record, especially when it comes to incomplete and unevenly distributed settlement data, and how best they might incorporate artefact-scale evidence.
