However, looking down at the roughly two-meters deep limestone excavation in cotton fields, this particular one doesn't inspire too much faith in its effectiveness. What he finds encouraging, however, is the fact that the philologist Brigitte Mannsperger has found a place in the Iliad where Homer, when talking about the Greek naval base, mentions a ditch and a wall. By now it is afternoon and we are driving back to the camp. Others are working with microscopes or trying to piece together bits of broken pottery in a kind of three-dimensional puzzle. Just over ten per cent of these bone specimens have been listed by Uerpmann and his colleagues to date.
Classification is made according to type of animal, age, size and gender.
Cows, sheep, goats and pigs were always the main source of meat. It wasn't until the emergence of Troy VI that recovery set in and the situation finally changed. Apparently even lions were hunted in those days. For a plant seed to have left a lasting trace it must have come into contact with fire and been carbonized in the absence of air. It appears that it was predominantly barley that the Trojans grew, and their fields lay presumably in relatively moist valleys - a fact suggested by the weeds that were found together with the barley seeds.