Bart Rendering (ACASA (UvA/VU))
Being involved in the new excavations at the ancient site of Troy in summer 2016, my interests for this famous city developed into writing my master thesis on the subject. More specifically, my master thesis is about the interconnectivity of Troy in a diachronic approach, which means that I do research on the interaction of Troy with other regions (for instance central and eastern Anatolia, the Aegean and the Balkan) and the change of these interactions over the course of 3000 years of Trojan habitation.
Research on Troy has been done since the 1870s, after which plenty of literature has been written, mostly by the Germans and the Americans. My stay in Istanbul in the month of March 2017 gave me many opportunities to collect data and literature on Troy in the libraries of the NIT and the DAI (the German Archaeological Institute). Moreover, I was able to visit the Troy collection in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, which helped me in my understandings of the materials collected from the site, especially the ceramics and its difficult sequences.
A five day trip to Çanakkale gave me the opportunity to do research on site as well. It was nice to go back to Troy and see our excavation of last summer, but with a different aim and new perspectives, focused on interconnectivity to better understand the site. Moreover, I got to meet Rüstem Aslan, the current excavation director, in the library of Korfmann, the former excavation director. He gave me advice on the case studies and we discussed the subject, as well as the plans for coming excavation campaign. All in all, this month gave me plenty of data and ideas to write and finish my thesis by June.