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Report on the First Stage of the Iron Age Dating Project in Israel: Supporting a Low Chronology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Ilan Sharon*
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Ayelet Gilboa
Affiliation:
Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Israel
A J Timothy Jull
Affiliation:
NSF-Arizona AMS Facility, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
Elisabetta Boaretto
Affiliation:
Radiocarbon Dating and Cosmogenic Isotopes Laboratory, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
*
Corresponding author. Email: Sharon@mscc.huji.ac.il.
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Abstract

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The traditional chronology of ancient Israel in the 11th–9th centuries BCE was constructed mainly by correlating archaeological phenomena with biblical narratives and with Bible-derived chronology. The chronology of Cyprus and Greece, and hence of points further west, are in turn based on that of the Levant. Thus, a newly proposed chronology, about 75–100 yr lower than the conventional one, bears crucial implications not only for biblical history and historiography but also for cultural processes around the Mediterranean. A comprehensive radiocarbon program was initiated to try and resolve this dilemma. It involves several hundreds of measurements from 21 sites in Israel. Creating the extensive databases necessary for the resolution of tight chronological problems typical of historical periods involves issues of quality control, statistical treatment, modeling, and robustness analysis. The results of the first phase of the dating program favor the new, lower chronology.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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