Archaeologist tackles mysteries of Troy

“Don’t mind me — I always seem to be like this.”

“Like this” is a bad case of jet lag. William Aylward, assistant professor of classics, has just returned from Turkey.

“Always,” though, proves a bit of a stretch. Normally he only spends summers at the nine ancient cities of Troy, whose history spans 3,000 years.

However, he has made a trip to show a crew from cable television’s Discovery Channel the fine points of what might or might not be Homer’s fabled site. Discovery is shooting a documentary scheduled to air Wednesday, May 12, as part of the series “Unsolved History,” just before the opening of the Brad Pitt film, “Troy.”

Hollywood has decreed antiquity hot. In addition to “Troy,” classicist fare includes Mel Gibson’s, “The Passion of the Christ.” And Alexander the Great will be featured when Oliver Stone’s “Alexander,” starring Val Kilmer, debuts in November.

This seemingly sudden surge in interest in the classics hardly surprises Aylward. He finds the intricacies of the many Troys endlessly fascinating, as did Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered it in 1870-71.

Archaeologists, including Carl William Blegen at the University of Cincinnati, picked up the thread. When Blegen died in 1971, Troy ceased to engender much scholarly attention. Interest revived in the late 1980s, with the University of Cincinnati, Aylward’s alma mater, leading the way. Aylward has been involved with this excavation since his student days in 1988.

Aylward’s own research specialties are Troys Eight and Nine. “I wouldn’t have minded living in Troy Nine. It was under Roman rule then. That was really Troy’s heyday,” he says.

Troy had then, as now, a tourist trade that could rival the Wisconsin Dells, Aylward says. By the time the Romans assumed control of Troy, Homer’s stories had passed into the cultural currency. Troy’s virtues as a tourist destination were advertised in Rome, and the ancient equivalent of tours and cruises took pilgrims and holiday revelers to the sites that Homer made legend. Guides led visitors through battle sites. Even Caesar took a trip to Troy.

In 2004, more than 1 million people visited the site, despite no hard evidence of a Greek overthrow of Troy. There is, however, much to suggest that the city has witnessed more than its share of destruction and conflict, Aylward says. Plus, there are many other questions to answer.

“Where did the technical expertise to construct the buildings come from? By tracing architectural design and engineering advancements, we can surmise that skilled tradesmen moved from town to town in the region,” he says.

Aylward is encouraging his students to make similar discoveries right here in Madison. This semester he is teaching a course in Roman archaeology, developed with colleague Nick Cahill in the Department of Art History. Students go into the field — in this case, the campus and the State Capitol — to look for clues that construction materials and architecture offer about particular times and social mindsets in history.

“As in ancient times, marble was used 100 years ago as a symbol, a means of communication. There are many different kinds of marble from many different places used in the Capitol. What does that tell us about society then? And what does the similarity between the architectural styles of the Wisconsin State Capitol and Hadrian’s Pantheon in Rome tell us?” Aylward asks.

He is planning a course expressly on Troy, and perhaps an international symposium on the cities along with the class next semester.

He will spend the summer it in Turkey.

“Troy was and still is an important site for learning about connections between Europe and Asia,” he says. “It’s truly amazing to realize that people were living at Troy at least 5,000 years ago. To walk around the site gives you a very real, very concrete sense of antiquity.”