The destruction level most often associated with the Trojan War is Troy VIIa, which shows evidence of fire and destruction dating to approximately 1180 BCE — squarely within the period of the Bronze Age Collapse and the Sea Peoples crisis.

Whether the Troy of Homer is the same as the archaeological site at Hisarlık is uncertain but plausible.

Whether the Trojan War as described by Homer reflects actual historical events from the Bronze Age Collapse period is another matter.

Homer composed his poems several centuries after the events he described, in a period when the Mycenaean world had already collapsed and been forgotten.

His account must be filtered through generations of oral transmission and poetic elaboration.