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December 5, 2007
Where the Real Action Is
Afarensis made me write this post. These are exciting times for that subset of Syro-Palestinian archaeology that on occasion informs our understanding of the Hebrew Bible and on very rare occasion is informed by the Hebrew Bible. The excitement is driven by continuing excavation in Israel, Jordon, Lebanon, Syrian and to a lesser extent the Palestinian territories; continuing surface surveys in these areas, particularly in Israel, in some parts of the Palestinian territories and in Jordon; a few important epigraphic finds and new, exciting, ways of looking at the evidence that was already known, sometimes known for over a hundred years.
Many of the new ways of looking at this evidence owe there origin to archaeologists reaching out to the larger archaeological community. In addition, better informed, better controlled, use of anthropology, modern laboratory techniques, and field disciplines has greatly enriched the discipline. Yes, processual theory is part of the package.
While many exciting things are happening, I think that the most exciting involve the ethnic diversity and chronology of the Iron Age. Issues once thought settled are again subject to serious discussion. Who were the first "Israelites?" Can we identify them from material remains? How did they differ from the Canaanites and the other peoples among whom they lived? How were they the same? How did they interact with each other and with others? When and how did they achieve a political identity? When and how did they achieve an ethnic identity? Were their political identity and their ethnic identity coincidental? Unified? If so, when and how did it become so?
Perhaps one example will suffice. With the exception of a few holdouts, most scholars are now reasonably certain that David and, by inference, Solomon were real leaders in what we call Judah. The Dan stele makes this all but certain. But of what were they leaders. The developing archaeological evidence has most archaeologists, or at least the ones I think are on the right track, convinced that the population of Judah was rather small and Jerusalem was not nearly as magnificent in those days as one might think from only reading the Hebrew Bible. There is an ongoing debate about what this means for the united kingdom of Israel and Judah; an early united kingdom so easily envisioned when reading the Hebrew Bible. But, despite a few important discoveries in Jerusalem, this united kingdom is increasingly difficult to find in the archaeological evidence. The issue is further complicated by field work that indicates, but does not prove, that monumental buildings at places like Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer should be attributed to Omri or Ahab rather than Solomon. The results of this fieldwork is supported by 14C studies of short-lived remains from a number of sites but even this is contested with reason and evidence. The bottom line is that this set of related underdetermined questions has not as yielded unambiguous answers.
Anyone wishing a good nontechnical overview of two largely conflicting but respected views of these issues will find The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, edited by Brian Schmidt and featuring essays by Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar, instructive.
This is where the action is. This is what excites people who seriously study the archaeology of the area. Special pleaders, crackpots, ideologues, and a few downright charlatans waste the time of real archaeologists with nonsense about Noah's Ark, Ark of the Covenant, the Garden of Eden, Sodom and Gomorrah. the Exodus and The Lost Tomb of Jesus. Worse, they divert the gullible and the ill-informed from the real excitement that is unfolding in this abnormally interesting field of study.
Archaeologist Eric Cline has taken the lead in an effort to keep both his colleagues and the public at large focused on what "Biblical Archaeology" is really about.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 5, 2007 8:56 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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