Abstract
Discoveries at Troy, The long-awaited discovery of a cemetery at Troy is announced by Dr. Carl Blegen, of the University of Cincinnati, in a communication issued by Science Service, Washington, D.C. This find was made by the third expedition of the University to Hissarlik. A second discovery of importance was on a site about three and a half miles from the actual citadel, at a marginal point of the area. Here Dr. Blegen found four graves, apparently of neolithic age, containing skeletons which in his opinion belong to a period antecedent to any settlement hitherto found on the site and representing the earliest inhabitants. At the same point, but at a higher level, were later remains, dating from the time of the fourth and fifth layers of the citadel. The cemetery belonging to Troy itself was found just outside the citadel. It is contemporary with the sixth city and consists of a series of urn burials containing ashes, remnants of burnt bones and traces of ornaments which had not been entirely consumed by the funerary pyres. The practice of cremation burial, naturally and unfortunately, has destroyed all evidence of the physical characters of the inhabitants of the city. A further discovery among the ruined houses was that of a well-preserved buried floor, which affords the first opportunity here for the investigation of a habitation site. The stone bases of columns which supported the upper story are still in place; but determining the alignment of the columns and the recovery of any household goods which the floor may have preserved will be the work of the expedition's next season.
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Research Items. Nature 135, 190–192 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135190a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135190a0