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Ancient texts and archaeology revisited – radiocarbon and Biblical dating in the southern Levant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Thomas E. Levy ,
Mohammad Najjar  and
Thomas Higham
Thomas E. Levy
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Center for Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology, California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology (Calit2), University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA (Email: tlevy@ucsd.edu)
Mohammad Najjar
Affiliation:
Levantine Archaeological Laboratory, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA (Email: m.najjar@joscapes.com)
Thomas Higham
Affiliation:
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK
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Abstract

The Iron Age sequence in the southern Levant is one of the most evocative and provocative in ancient history, since it coincides with events remembered in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). The authors show how a scientific chronological framework can be created and contribute an independent voice to the historical debate. They also show that, if archaeology is to complement history, such a framework requires an especially rigorous application of precision, in context definition, data handling and Bayesian radiocarbon dating, and urge such application to forthcoming work at the key Biblical site of Megiddo.

Keywords

LevantMegiddoKhirbat en-NahasIron AgeThe Biblecopper production

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Type
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Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 325 , September 2010 , pp. 834 - 847
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

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