Living in the Time of Troy: An Introduction to Early Bronze Age Tell Sites in Upper Thrace

In 1873, during his excavations at Troy, Heinrich Schliemann uncovered a spectacular hoard of gold jewelry and precious metal objects. Convinced he had found the riches of King Priam – the legendary ruler of Troy during its siege by Agamemnon and the Mycenaean coalition – Schliemann triumphantly declared that this was the “Treasure of Priam.” Today, we know he was off by roughly a thousand years. The artifacts he discovered were actually produced and used in the 3rd millennium BCE, during the Early Bronze Age. This was a remarkable period of rising prosperity, expanding long-distance trade, and the emergence of the world’s first urban centers, city-states, and kingdoms in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. And this connected world didn’t stop at Troy. Even in what is now Bulgaria, people were using drinking vessels and jewelry similar to those found in Troy and across the Aegean. Like their Anatolian counterparts, many communities in the eastern Balkans lived on tell sites – settlement mounds built up over generations – though their architecture was more modest than Troy’s. At the same time, new groups were arriving from the Eurasian steppes – modern-day Ukraine and neighboring regions. These migrants brought Indo-European languages and the practice of building burial mounds, yet they chose to adopt the same pottery styles used by the long-established tell communities.

In this lecture, we will begin by examining Early Bronze Age tell sites in the eastern Balkans as windows into social organization, economic life, and cultural interaction. We will then show how archaeogenetic research helps us unravel the coexistence of different communities and the networks that linked them. Finally, we will discuss how our fieldwork is shaping a deeper understanding of early global connections, social dynamics, resilience, and conflict.