Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Joshua and the Israelites, as described in the Bible (Garstang 1948, 179) [4].Kathleen Kenyon, who excavated from1952-58 [5], never provided site-wide stratigraphy for Jericho, choosing instead to date each trench and square independently.She concluded that the destruction of Garstang's City IVii did not occur in the Late Bronze Age, but was the terminus of the Middle Bronze city, which she associated with the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt (Kenyon 1967, 275) [6].The most recent excavations under the direction of Lorenzo Nigro et al. (1997-2000, 2009-2024) [3,7,8] indicate Kenyon's date of the destruction of the final phase of City IV at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, ca.1550 BCE is correct.Moreover, Nigro's Nigro 2016, 11; 2024, 48) [3,9] team harmonized the data from previous excavations with their own into an overall periodization of the site that clarifies the Middle and Late Bronze Age occupation of the site (See Table 1).According to their site stratigraphy, Stratum Va and Vb represent the Late Bronze occupation, not Stratum IVc, which they date to the Middle Bronze Age.These competing interpretations lead to fundamentally different reconstructions of Jericho's occupational history.
Author: Bryan Windle
Institution: Trinity Southwest University
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology (arts and humanities)
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7221828696