Even though there are no written documents directly related to the war, the findings that we have are not so bad. This is because the Legend of Troy did not take place in ancient dark ages but in the last Mycenaean period that has been somewhat attested to by archeology. On the other hand, Troy has been discovered in the Calvert excavations in 1863, and some of its secrets have been shared by other researchers during the Korfmann excavations of 1988-2005. We have quite a lot of archeological knowledge about the Mycenaean culture. However, the light that shines upon Troy, which is referred to as Wilusa, and its legends come from the East, the Anatolia. In recent years, the dominant view is that there is a relationship and a few similarities between the Iliad and the Gilgamesh. The fact that especially the narration technique and the struggles among the heroes in the Gilgamesh constitute the basis of the Iliad is becoming a livelier debate. In addition, a Hittite legend that talks about the invasion of a north Syrian city, Ebla in the 1600s BC, the Freedom Song, shares striking similarities with the Iliad. A growing number of researchers accept that there are various older Eastern narration elements in Homer's Iliad. It is certain that research on this subject will bring about new results in the coming years. We can think that the research on this field will have new and interesting results in terms of Homer, legends, and Eastern cultural tradition.
However, everything in fact starts in the year 1868. A wealthy German businessman Heinrich Schliemann, who is also a fan of Homer, makes a final stop in Dardanelle on his quest from Troy. The excavations in Pınarbaşı (Ballı Dağ), which used to be accepted as Troy at the time, were fruitless. Having missed his boar, Heinrich Schliemann by coincidence meets a famous person from Dardanelle, Frank Calvert. Calvert in fact had purchased and done some excavations in Hisarlik (Asarlik) Tepe in 1863 and 1865 and wrote some essays about the fact that this place could be Troy. However, due to financial difficulties he could not have realized his bigger scale excavations there. Schliemann had the money, the ambition and the discipline that Calvert lacked.
In this way, excavations in Troy starts first in 1870 but really in 1871, and continues on and off with sensations and scandals until Schliemann's death in 1890. after his death, Schliemann's architects Wilhelm Dörpfeld continues on with the excavations between 1893-94, and starts the Troy bedding which is still partly valid. After a long time, Carl Blegen makes really detailed excavations in Troy between 1932-38, and publishes his research in the 50s in eight volumes. These publications by Blegen are still considered to be the fundamental resource of Aegean archeology. Fifty years after the Blegen excavations, Manfred Osman Korfmann starts the new period excavations in 1988, and continues this work with very important findings until his death in 2005. Korfmann excavations have various new findings in different areas, but the most important among these is the proof of the location of the city of lower Troy by means of excavation, measurements and surface studies. It has been shown that the lower-castle city of Troy which started in 2500s BC, continued on till the 10th century BC with some changes in the defense mechanism, and after a 250 years of a weak period became magnificent again in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. However, in this settlement Troy had reached its most powerful periods in 1500-2000 BC. When we look at the West, we see that Troy was the most powerful city in the west of the East that was contemporaries with the central Mycenaean settlements. Pots and clays that are found here show us that Troy had relationships with the world of the Mycenaean and other central places in the Mediterranean. Homer's Ilios, which is Wilios in Bronze Age Greek is referred to as Wiriya, meaning Wiliya in the Egyptian remains dated back to the 14th century BC, and as Wilusija or Wilusa in various Hittite texts. There were no other cities as powerful and as magnificent as Troy on the northwest Anatolia.
According to the excavation results of Schliemann, Dörpfeld, Blegen, and Korfmann, a giant earthquake destroys the city towards the end of the 14th century BC in this war, the period named Troy VI by the archeologists ends. Even though the city got a bit weaker during its developmental stages called Troy VIIa (Vii)), it reaches its old power in no time. The walls and the gates are made stronger. The weak Western entrance is shut down. The defense walls and the heaps in the lower city continue to function, but this time in 1180s BC the city surrenders to disasters that look like a fire and a lost war. The skeletons that were left unburied, loose arrows and spearheads, and various groups of stones for slingshots that were unearthed during the Korfmann excavations are indications of these disasters. Therefore, the city of Troy was destroyed by disasters corresponding to the ones told by Homer's epics around that time. However, do these findings prove the poet's epic? It is hard to give a definite answer, but it is for sure that Troy was attacked and involved in a war, and there was a fire that destroyed most everything in the city.
We do not know whether or not it is right to resort to legends, epics in order to fill out the gaps in our archeological knowledge. Archeological data is not able to determine whether it was Greeks who attacked us and whether their general was Agamemnon or someone else. It is certain that the Greeks did not come with more than a thousand ships and stay on Troy coast for a ten year war. From a merely logistical perspective this looks impossible. However, we can infer from the Troy defense system that the Greek army was a strong one. Even Thucydides admits that the number of the ships mentioned in Homer's Iliad is exaggerated. While Thucydides might be right, we should keep in mind that the "guilty" party here is not Homer but "legend." It seems quite impossible to think that all the powers in the Greek states came together, because such a collaboration did not take place even during the Persian War, which was a war of life or death. Such collaboration could take place during a deep crisis in the Mycenaean Empire and when Thebes, Pylos and Mycenae were destroyed one after the other around 1200s BC. From what we know, we cannot conclude with certainty whether the disaster and the attacks in the Greek states took place before or after the war in Troy (the Trojan War?). What is certain is that there is not a long lag between the two events. We do not know whether the Mycenae ruler still had a palace of his own in his state when he conquered Troy. Legends mention the fall of a ruler in the Mycenaean Empire, but do not say anything about events like burning the palaces down.
As we have said before, legends give us some reliable information about the general situation in the Last Bronze Age. According to this information, here's the picture: we are faced with a Mycenaean Empire whose centers of power are not Argos, Corinth or Smyrna but Tiryns, Sparta, Pylos, Thebes, Iolkos, Knossos, and whose language is Greek. We know about all these from the tablets called the Liner-B, which were written in an early dialect of Greek and are being interpreted since 1952 in the archives of the Mycenaean and Pylos palaces. In these tablets, instead of any historical information about the daily events unfortunately we only find some insignificant administrative and bureaucratic information. Although they are not very useful for our purposes, information on these tablets shows that the language of Homer has a tradition that goes back to the Mycenaean period. In these tablets, we find some of the names that are not used in the classical period but are common around the 1300s BC, when we read Homer. In these written documents, there is a list of Milesian, Knidos Lemnian and Aswian women workers, who were probably brought to Pylos from eastern Aegean as war captives. We even see names of Trojan women here. However, there is no information in these tablets about the names of the heroes in Homer's epics, or who the king was in Mycenaean, Pylos, or the war with Troy, or war preparations. This information merely brings us to the edge of the date of the Trojan War, and leaves us to our own devices at that point.