Troy II is the major level of the Early Bronze Age. The walls enclose a roughly circular area some 110m in diameter. Like those of the preceding Troy I, these walls were built of stone foundations with a sun-dried mud brick superstructure. The foundations alone survive, 2m high, made of small, unworked stones. Their exterior surface is battered, that is, sloping, a distinctive characteristic of the walls of Troy in all periods. Towers stood at intervals of 10m. Today, the visitor can admire in particular the south-west gate (Figure 8.3). A long steep ramp leads up to the gateway, laid out on a three-part plan, outer and inner gates with a central room in between. Such a plan allows for a better control of those coming in or out.
The main buildings inside Troy II are called megarons, after Homer — here, simple long rectangular structures, with a front porch and a larger rectangular room behind. In contrast with later Mycenaean megarons, the Troy II examples are freestanding, not embedded inside a larger palace complex. They stand parallel to each other, aligned on a north-east to south-west axis. The largest has been labeled Megaron II A. Although much of its western side was destroyed by Schliemann before he realized what he was digging through, its measurements can be reconstructed as roughly 30m X 10m. Its walls consisted of sun-dried bricks, reinforced by wooden beams, erected on foundation of large unworked stones. Remains of a circular clay platform, the ancestor of the hearth in the Mycenaean megaron, were discovered in the middle of the beaten clay floor. The building is sufficiently wide that a central row of columns must have supported the flat roof of clay and reeds laid on beams. Presumably the columns were of wood, but all traces have vanished. As
Figure 8.3 Troy II, ramp and south-west gate
The centuries progressed, smaller houses filled the open spaces in front of the large megarons, as if the need to shelter more people within the fortified space grew more pressing.
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