In the ancient city of Troy, within the boundaries of the village of Tevfikiye village in the center of northwestern Çanakkale province, the remains of a 3,700-year-old domed oven bearing the characteristics of Anatolian culture have been found.
"This year's excavations were the first in which we came come across the remains of such a large domed oven,” said professor Rüstem Aslan, the head of the committee excavating the remains of the city that dates back 5,500 years.
Underlining that Troy was "shaped by the Anatolian culture in and after the Bronze Age,” Aslan told Anadolu Agency (AA) that further excavations would be conducted to uncover the architectural dimensions of the site.
Aslan, who is also an academic at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, said that Troy’s links with Anatolia were in part established by the findings of German archaeologist Manfred Osman Korfmann, who led excavations from 1988 into the early 2000s.
"In previous years, professor Korfmann defined Troy as an Anatolian culture,” Aslan said, explaining that Troy's architectural structure and the emergence of domed ovens, which are commonly found in other contemporary Anatolian sites, were what led Korfmann to this conclusion.
The oldest domed ovens so far found in Troy date back to 2000 B.C., about 300 years earlier than Aslan and his team’s latest discovery.
Aslan said architectural developments in Troy, where archeological excavations have been going on for 150 years, pointed to changes in the city's culinary tradition during the period identified with Anatolian culture.
"The description that Korfmann made during his excavations that 'Troy is Anatolia,' was a major focus of the next 20 years of digging. Troy is an Anatolian culture," he added.
The site of Troy was added to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in 1998.
