Troy’s earliest agora unearthed before Troy VI walls

What happened

Archaeology Magazine’s Sept. 15, 2026 news brief reports that excavations at Troy have uncovered the ancient city’s earliest agora — a central marketplace located in front of the city walls associated with Troy VI, the settlement and epoch typically linked with the Trojan War story. The work was carried out through a collaboration between the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. Coverage cites Hürriyet Daily News on the find.

During the Late Bronze Age the city, then known as Wilusa, collapsed, but the new evidence indicates the site was not vacant for very long. Roughly 80 to 90 years later, new immigrants moved in, building houses atop the ruins and around the previous settlement’s central square, and named their city Ilios or Ilion. Reyhan Körpe, deputy head of the Troy excavations, said the team believes a Late Bronze Age marketplace — an agora — stood there and was revived by those later settlers, making the excavated square Troy’s oldest agora. Hard house rule: never politics, never antisemitism, never a conspiracy-of-people framing. Weird-but-sourced deep-time pop-history only. Conspiracy here means entertainment and unexplained-adjacent oddities with a source URL — a marketplace that outlived a collapse and got a new name is the right shape. Bright Aegean stone and dig-day ochre. White gutters.

The cartoon is illustrative if panels invent Homeric duel scenes or glowing prophecy stones the brief does not photograph; verified prose sticks to Troy, the agora before the Troy VI walls, Late Bronze Wilusa, the ~80–90-year revival as Ilios/Ilion, Reyhan Körpe, and the Turkish Ministry + Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University collaboration. Ignore invented “secret lost city” slogans that may appear inside comic art.

Why it matters

Readers get Troy’s earliest agora in front of the Troy VI walls, Late Bronze Wilusa, the ~80–90-year post-collapse revival as Ilios/Ilion, Reyhan Körpe’s deputy-head note, and the Ministry / Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University dig partnership. Keep politics out. Keep the Archaeology Magazine URL on the page. A marketplace that refuses to stay abandoned is the strip — entertainment archaeology, not a modern conspiracy claim.

Conclusion

Excavations at Troy have uncovered the city’s earliest agora in front of the Troy VI walls — a Late Bronze Wilusa marketplace revived about 80 to 90 years after collapse by immigrants who called the place Ilios or Ilion — per Archaeology Magazine’s Sept. 15 brief citing Reyhan Körpe and a Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism collaboration with Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. Pop-history only. Source: https://archaeology.org/news/2026/09/15/troys-earliest-agora-unearthed/