#curlyhairedwelshdragon

I’ve been trying to fix that but mobile hates me

Anyway, here’s the link:https://archiveofourown.org/works/15316347

I AM A HUGE ARCHAEOLOGY NERD SO PREPARE YOURSELF

(Also disclaimer: this is basically just fun facts I remember from my archaeology and history classes, and I don’t have my notes with me so some stuff might be missing, but anyways)

okAY SO:

- schliemann was NOT an archaeologist, he was a German businessman, but he got so rich that he retired early and was so obsessed with the iliad that he decided to go and try and find Homer’s Troy (despite the fact no one was even sure if it really existed bc homer is not exactly a reliable historical source)

-but Schliemann was such a fanboy that he believed that the Iliad was 100% factual and true

-and so he goes to Turkey (where ancient Troy was likely located) and after doing some research, starts digging (or rather hires people to dig)

-and surprisingly enough he finds troy, or rather, he digs straight through it

- bc the thing is, the area of land that Homer’s Troy was located on, had been the home to several different cities over the years, so essentially there were several “layers” of cities on this site

-which is super cool and interesting archaeologically speaking, but of course schliemann didn’t care about that, so he just digs straight through to the bottom layer, assuming that the oldest city would be the Troy of the iliad

-well he was wrong, and modern archaeologists believe that the 6th layer of the 9 layers is likely the bronze age Troy of Homer’s Iliad, and that bottom layer (the oldest) was an earlier, smaller settlement (likely a precursor to Homer’s Troy)

-well Schliemann didn’t know this, and probably wouldn’t care if he did, but IT GETS BETTER

-he was such a fanboy that he was determined to make his discovery look as good as possible and he’s been implicated in some pretty shady and unarchaeological practices while doing this dig

-my favourite of which being that he had declared that he had discovered a treasure hoard filled with jewelry that had belonged to THE Helen of Troy

- and of course, as one naturally does when you find an ancient treasure hoard, he put all the jewelry on his wife and paraded her around in it (aka my favourite picture bc it’s so ridiculous X)

- BUT THEN there’s all this controversy surrounding this, bc apparently he didn’t even find all the treasure in one place, it had allegedly been scattered all across the site, in different “layers” of cities (meaning they weren’t even from the same time period!!) but of course, finding a treasure hoard sounds a lot cooler than finding scattered jewelry so Schliemann wanted to keep this hush hush

-and basically, he did a lot of other shitty things in Troy (including THEFT which he called “smuggling”) and so he’s banned from doing archaeology in Turkey

- but he’s like, oh okay, imma go to Greece then, and conduct slightly illegal digs in Mycenae (which also features in the Iliad, as the home as King Agamemnon, brother of Melanus)

- so he digs around in Mycenae for awhile, and comes upon the now-famous gold death mask of agamemnon, except, bc he had been so shady archaeologists for awhile weren’t sure if it was actually real or not, bc Schliemann had a history of making shit up to sensationalize his finds and make himself look good

- plus the death mask had facial hair, unlike a lot of the others from the time period (whether or not it’s legit is still being debated, but consensus is leaning towards it being real (i think))

-AND SO basically schliemann was a hardcore Homer fanboy who messed up a lot of actual archaeology trying to make himself look good

-BUT we can’t entirely blame him, bc at the time archaeology wasn’t a scientific discipline with rules and regulations to follow, it was more of an all out treasure hunt by antiquarians

our fire alarm went off at 5am a couple weeks ago for NO FUCKING REASON so I feel you

yup we’ve had alarms at 4:45 am, 6:30am, 7am, 7:30am, 9:30am, and 3:30pm

ANY and ALL of Jennifer L Armentrout's books, for starters. I can give you a shit ton of others too if you'd like

BARELY. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO KEEP SILENT DURING THIS SHIT?