An archaeology trip to the ancient city of Troy led by UW-Madison researchers has been postponed until next summer because of an unexpected move last week by the Turkish government to suspend permits for archaeology work this summer.

“It caught everybody off guard,” said William Aylward, a UW-Madison archaeologist and leader of the planned new excavations of Troy, the setting for Homer’s “The Iliad.”

Aylward, a classics professor, was to leave Monday for the field work, which he said would involve at least 20 others from the university, including students and researchers. His colleagues were scheduled to arrive on a rolling basis starting Thursday, with work slated to wrap up in late August.

Aylward learned of the ruling last week by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism from a colleague at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, the host institution. The decision effectively cancels about 100 archaeology expeditions in the country this summer, he said.

“We’re very optimistic about 2014,” he said. “It’s a temporary setback. Our objectives have not changed.”

Aylward has not heard directly from the government agency responsible for the decision, and State Journal efforts to reach Turkish officials have so far been unsuccessful.

He said he understands the Turkish ministry of culture and tourism has undergone significant internal changes with a new director appointed this year and wanted to halt permits temporarily to come to a clearer understanding of how projects are managed in the archaeologically rich country.

Aylward intended to use the molecular science of biotechnology to unlock some of the mysteries of everyday life of not only the Greeks and the Romans but of the prehistoric Trojan people, about whom many questions remain. It’s called molecular archaeology and involves the genetic analyses of human and animal remains as well as the study and reconstruction of ancient proteins scraped from long-buried pots and other artifacts to reveal what a Trojan family ate for dinner on some long-ago night.

Aylward recruited UW-Madison scientist Greg Barrett-Wilt, who specializes in using sophisticated instruments to study proteins, as a partner in the collaboration.

Aylward, who has done archaeology at Troy for 15 years, plans to extend the digs at the long-studied site to an area that has escaped extensive study.

He will focus his work on a 50-acre area that spreads out beneath the 6-acre citadel, or central walled city.

Aylward believes the lower town, also walled, offers a potentially rich trove of items from daily life.

He will be looking for more than just the flashy items typically seen in archaeological displays in museums, the ornate vases and pieces of ancient art. In the ruins of the more prosaic homes below the main city of Troy, he hopes to find evidence of daily life — tableware, utensils, cookware and the large storage jars called pithoi that were used to hold grain, olive oil or other foods for shipping.

Similar containers were used as urns to store the ashes of the dead.

Aylward will even be looking for the Trojan equivalent of a landfill, a place where the residents of Troy discarded their broken pots and dishes, and other castoffs.

Aylward said the group submitted a research plan by last Dec. 1, as required, and the plan won approval in June from the Turkish General Directorate of Museums and Monuments. The later decision to suspend permits came as a surprise but was also a reminder of the complexity of organizing large excavations in a foreign country.

“There are ups and downs and setbacks,” he said. “That’s what we’re encountering.”

Reporter, Wisconsin State Journal

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