Who were the Trojans?

Trojans in Homeric epic, that is, set in an archaified version of the 7th century BCE, almost all have Greek names, and they’re grouped with a mix of Lelegians, Mysians, and a variety of other Anatolian and Thracian groups. This is a good match for Trojans of the classical era, who were a mix of indigenous groups plus Aeolian Greeks. And the Trojans of the Roman and Byzantine periods were Romans — by citizenship, at least. We don’t know anything much about the ethnicity or the language of Bronze Age Trojans, but (a) their material culture was Anatolian-aligned — this 1998 article by Penelope Mountjoy is a good read on that — and (b) Late Bronze Age groups in western Anatolia have almost no overlap with the indigenous groups we see in the historical period.

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