German businessman and archaeologist who discovered and excavated Troy, Tiryns, Mycenae, and Ithaca. Retiring from business a wealthy man at 41, he sought to identify Homer's Troy. He did so, on a site overlooking the Dardanelles with nine superimposed cities containing a startling wealth of material. He was the first to recognize stratigraphy in a Near Eastern tell (Hisarlik was the first large dry-land man-made mound to be dug.), he popularized archaeology; and he set standards of careful observation, recording, and rapid publication. He also worked at Mycenae, where his discovery of the shaft graves and their implications was as important as his work at Troy. Schliemann, together with Wilhelm Dörpfeld, excavated the great fortified site of Tiryns near Mycenae. They revealed the wealth and civilization of the Aegean Bronze Age and gave added support to the reliability of the classical legends. Modern archaeologists have criticized his approaches, but Schleimann remains a pioneer and extremely important contributor to the study of the Mycenaean civilization. He had long thought that there must have existed in the Mediterranean a civilization earlier than Mycenae and Bronze Age Hisarlik, and he guessed that it might be in Crete. At one time he wanted to excavate in Crete, but he could not agree to the price asked for the land. The discovery of the pre-Mycenaean civilization of Minoan Crete was left to Sir Arthur Evans, 10 years after Schliemann's death.