230Th/U dating of the Trojan ‘water quarries’

Abstract

We determined the 230Th/U ages of individual calcite layers that grew on the walls of artificial water‐supply tunnels (‘water quarries’) at Troy/Ilios by using thermal ionization mass spectrometry. The oldest age of overgrowth being 4350 ± 570 years, the tunnels must have been built a short time earlier, during the archaeological period Troy I–II. The tunnels were also used during Troy VI–VII (1700–1150 bce, a period that includes the date of the supposed ‘Trojan War’), in Homeric times (c. 720 bce) and in the Roman period. These findings add strong support to the identification of the water quarries with a natural phenomenon and Anatolian deity known in Hittite texts of the second millennium bce as KASKAL.KUR, a term denoting subsurface water systems. Consequently, they reinforce the view that Troy in the second millennium bce was Anatolian in character. In this way, the findings are also consistent with the identification of (W)Ilios with Wilusa, a city attested to in Hittite historical texts.

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