'If you like, this is where Greek history starts'

[Viggen]

DNA analysis of Bronze Age bones will answer an ancient question. 'I have seen the face of Agamemnon." No, not the reaction of filmgoers after seeing Brian Cox's depiction of the Greek king in Troy, but that of the celebrated 19th century archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann after digging up a striking Bronze Age gold mask from ancient Greece.

 

Schliemann was not known for understatement - on excavating the ruins of Troy he said he had "opened a new world" for archaeology - but on this occasion he was wrong. The shaft graves at Mycenae where he found the mask have now been dated to 1500BC, and it would stretch even the historical flexibility of a Hollywood scriptwriter to place Agamemnon there several centuries before he led the Greeks in the Trojan war. The glittering death mask, treasure and the rest of the haul recovered from the graves were not his, but whose were they? The question has long puzzled archaeologists.

 

full article at the Guardian