Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/196

 Troy. 175 masses of broken pottery, amongst which however, we look, but look in vain, for traces of tiles. As at Thera, here also we reserve the description of the pottery for a future chapter. The layer representing the ruins of the first village is covered by a bed of vegetable earth, in depth cir. fifty centimetres ; in itself this is sufficient proof that the site was left desolate for a long time. Above is a stratum of varying thickness, chiefly made up of soil and ruin, which served to build the esplanade of the second town. On the south side, the artificial mound supporting the esplanade was fifty centimetres deep only ; but to the northward the distance from the virgin rock was redeemed by artificial soil three metres in height. Thanks to the uniform level thus obtained, our information at this date is particularly clear and coherent. The possibility of minute pieces of metal and ivory having got loose and fallen into the trench below cannot be reversed : fragments of terra-cotta and domestic utensils without number did not mount up the slopes of the hill to reappear in a stratum above that to which they originally belonged. But there is danger, no doubt, that by some mischance objects which in reality came from the ill- defined layers which cover the burnt city may have been ascribed thereto, owing to pieces having got out of their proper place when the accumulations of debris which form the esplanade were tumbled about. But their number, especially since 1890, is avowedly so small and insignificant, that it in no way affects the question under notice. Under the direction of Dorpfeld, the excavations of 1890 have almost laid bare the whole radius of the second city ; and most of the objects representing its industry were brought out of the ruins of contemporaneous abodes. These, which in the first village were comparatively few, are found here in much greater numbers ; by their help we are enabled to test the standard of culture reached by the colony settled here, the civil state of which, so to speak, rested on a footing which shows a decided advance. What strikes the visitor in going over the trenches opened by Schliemann at Hissarlik is the enormous rampart which surrounds the second city, and which plays the part both of a support and wall of defence (Fig. 40). His excavations of 1872,