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Reassessing the chronology of Biblical Edom: new excavations and 14C dates from Khirbat en-Nahas (Jordan)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2015

Thomas E. Levy ,
Russell B. Adams ,
Mohammad Najjar ,
Andreas Hauptmann ,
James D. Anderson ,
Baruch Brandl ,
Mark A. Robinson  and
Thomas Higham
Thomas E. Levy
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0532, USA (Email: [email protected])
Russell B. Adams
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4L9
Mohammad Najjar
Affiliation:
Department of Antiquities of Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
Andreas Hauptmann
Affiliation:
Deutsches Bergbau-Museum, D – 44787 Bochum, Germany
James D. Anderson
Affiliation:
Anthropology Program, North Island College, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
Baruch Brandl
Affiliation:
Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem, Israel
Mark A. Robinson
Affiliation:
Environmental Archaeology Unit, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford OX1 3PW, UK
Thomas Higham
Affiliation:
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford 1 3QJ, UK
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Abstract

An international team of researchers show how high-precision radiocarbon dating is liberating us from chronological assumptions based on Biblical research. Surface and topographic mapping at the large copper-working site of Khirbat en-Nahas was followed by stratigraphic excavations at an ancient fortress and two metal processing facilities located on the site surface. The results were spectacular. Occupation begins here in the eleventh century BC and the monumental fortress is built in the tenth. If this site can be equated with the rise of the Biblical kingdom of Edom it can now be seen to: have its roots in local Iron Age societies; is considerably earlier than previous scholars assumed; and proves that complex societies existed in Edom long before the influence of Assyrian imperialism was felt in the region from the eighth – sixth centuries BC.

Keywords

Iron AgeLevantEdomcopper-workingchronologystate formation
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 78 , Issue 302 , December 2004 , pp. 865 - 879
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2004

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