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Why do more recent dates for the destruction of Troy VIIa raise questions about the Trojan War?

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Schliemann, Heinrich — Heinrich Schliemann Heinrich Schliemann, detail of an engraving by A. Weger, after a photograph.

The identification of Troy VIIa as the site of the Trojan War has been challenged by more recent archaeological dating. While the University of Cincinnati expedition previously concluded that Troy VIIa was the capital of King Priam destroyed around 1260 BCE, newer investigations place the destruction of this layer between 1220 and 1180 BCE.12

This revised timeline raises questions regarding the identity of the attackers because Mycenaean settlements on the Greek mainland were in decline during this same period. Consequently, the historical alignment between the archaeological evidence of the city's destruction and the traditional narrative of the war—which Heinrich Schliemann fervently sought to prove—remains a subject of scholarly debate.13