Fragment of Bone Flute Found at Troy, the Site’s First Musical Instrument in Excavation History

Archaeologists at Troy have uncovered a fragmentary bone flute dating to about 2,800 years ago, the first musical instrument reported from the site in more than 160 years of excavation.

The find was announced publicly Oct. 22 by Türkiye’s culture and tourism minister, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, and was also reported by Anadolu Agency, the state-run news agency. Officials said the object is the first and only musical instrument identified in Troy’s excavation history and described it as direct archaeological evidence of music culture at the site.

The flute fragment was recovered during the 2026 excavation season at Hisarlık, the archaeological site in northwestern Türkiye identified as ancient Troy. According to officials, the surviving piece is the instrument’s head, or mouthpiece, section where it joined the body; the rest of the flute is not intact.

Excavations at Troy are led by Prof. Dr. Rüstem Aslan of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. This year’s work was carried out under Türkiye’s Culture and Tourism Ministry program known as “Geleceğe Miras,” or “Heritage for the Future.” The newly reported finds, including the flute fragment, have been accessioned into the collection of the Troya Museum.

The excavation team and the ministry have dated the object to the Archaic period, around the 8th century BCE. That would place it roughly 2,800 years old. But the dating announced so far is based on the archaeological layer where it was found — a stratigraphic attribution, meaning a date assigned from the deposit and surrounding material rather than from a direct laboratory test on the object itself. As of the public announcement, no radiocarbon date or peer-reviewed technical study of the flute had been released.

That caveat matters, but so does the rarity of the find. Troy is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the best-known archaeological sites in the eastern Mediterranean, with excavations stretching back to the 19th century. Organic instruments made from materials such as bone do not often survive in the ground, which is one reason even an incomplete example is noteworthy. In this case, the importance officials emphasized was local and specific: this is the first physical instrument evidence reported from Troy itself.

The announcement did not include a published acoustic analysis, reconstruction or assessment of whether the instrument could be played, and there is no released study tying it to a particular performance tradition. What officials have said is narrower and more secure: the fragment indicates that music-making formed part of life at Troy in the period represented by that layer.

Aslan has said the object is especially interesting because it comes from an 8th-century BCE context, broadly overlapping with the period many scholars associate with the formation of the Homeric epics. That timing is notable because the Iliad and the Odyssey are often placed in the later 8th century BCE or, more broadly, the Archaic period. But the connection goes no further than chronology. There is no evidence that this flute had any link to Homer, to singers of epic poetry, or to performances of those works.