One thing Brian Rose has learned from digging up 3,000-year-old civilizations: “Nothing's changed.”

        “It's something I try to impress on my students — in terms of people and their response to the world around them, there's no substantial difference between us and antiquity.”

        Mr. Rose should know. The 45-year-old Clifton resident, professor of classical archaeology and head of the archaeology department at the University of Cincinnati has spent the past 14 summers digging up ancient Troy, site of the maybe-it-happened-maybe-it-didn't Trojan War and that famous horse with a bellyful of armed Greeks.

        He leaves town Saturday for his 15th and final summer on the dusty plane in western Turkey.

        It's a bittersweet trip, this one. Bitter because it's his last summer on a project that made him a star in the digging industry, landing him a slot as a trustee of the American Academy in Rome as well as feature stories in the New York Times, on the Discovery, Learning and Discovery Canada cable channels, in National Geographic and, most recently, in Discover magazines.

        Bitter also because he'll miss the way the community welcomes his team as a family. He'll even miss the 5 a.m. wakeup calls, the days that go 'til 8 or 9 at night and the shower that's really a trickle.

        But also sweet because his team has accomplished everything it said it would when he and project partner Manfred Korfmann of the University of Tubingen, Germany, began writing proposals more than 15 years ago.

        “We won't be digging this summer because we're going to study stuff we've already excavated, especially pottery and animal bones to learn more about their diets. You can reconstruct so much of the history of a city that way.”

        Not that Troy is just any city. The site has been occupied by a series of nine different cities built one atop the other over a span of 3,000 years. That makes it a wonderfully rich but horrendously complicated dig.

        But a dig that also sometimes serves up a happy accident. Mr. Rose is the first to admit that “a lot of our finds have been accidental. We'd be in a trench looking for one thing and find something else and say, "omigosh, look at this.' ” ;

Sobering discovery

        ; His focus this summer will be 1,000 B.C. to 1,500 A.D., long after the alleged Trojan War took place.

        Current thinking, and something that evolved in part out of Mr. Rose's digging, is that the Trojan War did indeed happen and that poet Homer didn't make it all up.

        “What we're thinking is that the war was actually a series of 13th and 12th century BC wars and battles redefined by the poet as one war.

        “The really sobering thought in all this for me is that yes, wars will always occur and cities will be leveled, so there'll always be a need to excavate. Students laugh at me because they can't conceive of it, but I always tell them, "Some day, our city will be excavated and studied too.'

        “I mean, look at the World Trade Center. It's an archaeological site right in our lifetimes. I went to Ground Zero and as I stood there looking at it, I think I understood what Athens felt when Persia sacked the city. It's one thing to teach students about that, but it's another to actually feel it.”

Discovering interests

        One thing he's feeling right now is, well, a little bit sore. He just bought a house in Clifton and is using his spare time to whip it into shape. “It's 100 years old and needs some propping up. New fireplace, new marble, a lot of painting.”

        All of which leaves precious little free time: “Between teaching, publishing and managing the department, I just go home at night and collapse. Except Tuesdays when I try to do bluegrass night at Kaldi's. I love it.”

        So maybe next he'll go dig up some little berg in Appalachia's bluegrass belt?

        “Honestly, I don't know what I'll do next. I've been so spoiled by Troy with almost 5,000 years of history. Most sites aren't like that. Rome is my specialty so the next step is probably something in Italy, though I'm not sure what I'd be looking for.

        “If I had unlimited time and money? I haven't thought that through, but it would probably be Lavinium, the city Aeneas founded south of Rome. It would be great fun to follow in his footsteps, sort of a poetic next step for me since he was Trojan.

        “Of course, we have no idea if he even existed. But just to follow the literature that is so rich with references would be a dream job.”

        So would singing on Broadway. “I always wanted to be in musical comedies. The theater. In a way, teaching classes in the dark — I show a lot of slides — right after lunch is theater. You have to be a showman to keep students awake on a full stomach .”

Projecting imagination

        So you gotta wonder with a guy like this, someone who has studied civilizations from 4,000 BC to 1,500 AD, what period of time would he live in if he had his pick?

        “Ooooh, it's something I've thought about, and something that changes all the time. It used to be Rome in the 1st century A.D. because I wrote a book about it. Then, in the wake of 9-11, I thought Athens after the Persian wars in the 5th century B.C. And Troy? Always, just to see if my reconstructions are valid.

        “And then, not long ago, I was in Rome, giving a lecture. As I was describing things from about the 4th century B.C., slaves being castrated or burned alive, I found it hard to believe that Romans could have watched this and not cried out.

        “I'd very much like to go back and study their reactions to such reprehensible violence.”

        But not now. For now, it's back to Troy, back to the dust swirling in his coffee cup at 5 a.m., back to brushing off 2,500 years of dirt trying to figure out what the heck this thingamajig was for, back to envisioning entire civilizations based on shards of pottery and handfuls of grain.

        “Well, sure, conditions aren't ideal. But there's nothing I'd rather be doing.”

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