Eric H Cline

Eric H Cline is an archaeologist and ancient historian known for research on the Late Bronze Age, the eastern Mediterranean, and the historical questions behind traditional accounts of Troy. Archaeology and the Iliad is his fourteen-lecture course on the Trojan War in Homer and History, released by Recorded Books and Modern Scholar in 2006. Cline compares the Iliad with evidence from Mycenaean, Hittite, Trojan, and later Greek sources, then follows excavations from Heinrich Schliemann through Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Carl Blegen, and Manfred Korfmann. The course asks whether Troy existed, which archaeological layers might correspond to conflict, and how centuries of oral transmission shaped the story associated with Homer. Cline’s role as lecturer matters because the publication originated as an audio course with an accompanying guide, not as a conventional single-volume narrative history. Archaeology and the Iliad therefore fits his broader work as a public scholar who explains how material remains, inscriptions, and literary traditions can support competing interpretations of the ancient Mediterranean.