Hisarlik does not fit Homer's description of Troy

The argument

In his book 'The Troy Deception', John Crowe gives ten reasons why Hisarlik cannot be the site of Troy as described in Homer's Iliad. It may seem initially that he is alone in theorising about this, but he was heavily influenced by two other theorists; John Lascelles who wrote 'Troy: The World Deceived', and Robert Bittlestone who wrote 'Odysseus Unbound: The Troy Deception'. The reasons John Crowe provided as evidence against Hisarlik being the site of Troy are as follows: 1. Hisarlik has no natural acropolis. 2. Hisarlik is perched on the edge of a plateau. 3. The so-called citadel at Hisarlik is too small. 4. The archaeology does not fit the legends. 5. Hisarlik was a coastal fortress but Troy was described as 'far from the ships'. 6. With Hisarlik being next to a beach, there is no room for the Trojan Plains. 7. Besik Bay is not where the Greeks camped. 8. Teuthrania was not near Hisarlik (Trojans were also known as Teucrians according to Herodotus). 9. There are no hot springs at Hisarlik but two springs at Troy. 10. The main river is in the wrong location. In his book, John Lascelles also argues that some of these ideas are legitimate, particularly the theory that Hisarlik is not big enough to be the site of Troy. He suggests that the Greek invaders would have easily overrun the city with their huge force, and reminds the reader that Troy had to be big enough to contain palaces for the wealthy inhabitants, houses for all the people, public places, markets, streets, huge walls, and great fortifications. Hisarlik is only about 28,000 square meters, which is too small for all of this infrastructure and for the 5,000-12,000 Trojan inhabitants.

Context

Hisarlik is widely considered to be the location of Troy, but there are some who believe the evidence isn't there. The authors John Crowe and John Lascelles both wrote books detailing why Hisarlik does not, in fact, fit the description of Troy, and they offer Pergamon as an alternative.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The theorists who have written books on the topic are not classicists or well-renowned scholars. John Crowe was a civil engineer who studied Ancient History during his retirement. This certainly creates some suspicion, particularly because of the lack of widely circulated information about this theory in the field of classics. Some of these claims criticise elements of Hisarlik's topography, but it is important to remember that Troy existed thousands of years ago and the topography has changed enormously. Even with some knowledge of how the landscape has changed over time, it would be impossible to know exactly what Troy and all of its surroundings looked like. Even Homer described Troy hundred of years after the war, so may not have been accurate.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Most of the topographical objections have standard answers in the archaeological literature. The Scamander plain has silted heavily since the Bronze Age and the coastline has advanced several kilometres, so the site's present distance from the sea is not the distance in the period concerned — which disposes of the beach, the plain and the 'far from the ships' points together. [Rejecting P2] The 28,000 square metre figure is the citadel, not the settlement. Survey work from the 1990s identified a substantial lower town outside the fortified mound, which is where the population and ordinary housing the premise says are missing would have lived. Sizing the whole city from its acropolis understates it by a large margin. [Rejecting P3] The counter-argument on record raises the provenance problem: the ten reasons come from authors outside the field — Crowe was a civil engineer who took up ancient history in retirement — and the theory has left no trace in classical scholarship. It also notes that Homer was composing centuries after any events described, so treating the poem's geography as a specification a site must satisfy assumes an accuracy the poem was never shown to have. [Rejecting C] Even granting every objection, showing that a site does not match a description does not locate the city elsewhere, and the argument offers no positive evidence for Pergamon.