Dating in Archaeology |
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Written by Stephen Langfur |
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Page 1 of 2 One effect of Roman domination was to change the nature of cities in the Holy Land. There seems to have been a general feeling of security, enough so that urban dwellers could descend from the crowded hilltops and build on the flat land below. For the same reason, they felt they could rely, for the first time, on water channeled from distant springs.
Before the Romans, however, a city needed a hill for defense, with a spring nearby. Certain proportions had to be right: the hill had to be small enough so that the population supplied by the spring would suffice to produce enough soldiers to defend a wall surrounding the hill. You needed enough good agricultural land to feed that population. (You also needed peasants in nearby villages to work the land: about ten for every aristocrat in the city.) If you wanted to engage in commerce, you had to be near a decent road.
If we knew for sure that a particular king or pharaoh ruled between 970 and 930 BC, and if we were to find many pottery fragments containing his name in a particular stratum, we could then assert that such fragments, along with any others found uniquely in the stratum with them, date from those years. On finding similar fragments in the stratum of another tell, even without the inscriptions, we could then say that this stratum too must be dated between 970 and 930 BC. In theory that works, but it just hasn't happened.
According to one limmu list, a solar eclipse occurred in the tenth regnal year of the Assyrian king, Assurdan II, in the month of Sivan (May-June). Using the Canon of Ptolemaeus, scholars date that king's tenth year to 763 BC. On purely astronomical grounds, modern scientists have computed that there was in fact a solar eclipse on June 15, 763 BC. Thus we get an absolute date, a chronological anchor, for Assurdan II, and thanks to the detail of the limmu lists, we can extend our confidence to the kings after him, down to 631 BC. The Assyrians took the Egyptian city of Thebes in 664 BC, so from this time the firmness extends to Egypt as well. What is more, in the 6th century BC, coins began to circulate widely; these often contain data enabling researchers to determine the date of their minting. 2. A Test of Time Home Page. The Official David Rohl Website. 3. J.G. van der Land, "Pharaohs and the Bible: David Rohl's chronology untenable" 4. P.G. van der Veen, "Is Rohl's chronology inaccurate?" 5. Jonathan Wade, Waste Of Time Home Page
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Holy Land
Galilee: Arbel cliff | Mount of Beatitudes | Capernaum | Dan | Hammat Tiberias | Kursi | Beth Shean | Nazareth | Sepphoris | Banias (Caesarea Philippi) | Bethsaida | Chorazin | Gamla | Hazor | Tabgha | Cana | Megiddo | Mount Tabor
Coast : Caesarea Maritima
Highlands : Bethlehem | Jerusalem | Shechem (Nablus) | Muhraka on Mount Carmel | Hebron | Herodium | Mamre | Solomon's Pools
Jerusalem : Jerusalem: Introduction | Mount of Olives | Gethsemane | St. Peter in Gallicantu | Mount Zion | The Upper Room | Via Dolorosa | Church of the Holy Sepulcher | The Cemeteries of Jerusalem | St. Anne's Church and Pool of Bethesda | Pater Noster Church and Mosque of Ascension | Excavations around the Temple platform | Ein Kerem | City of David | Western Wall | Temple Mount | Al-Aqsa Mosque | Dome of the Rock | Shrine of the Book | Yad va Shem
Shephelah : The Shephelah: An Introduction | Emmaus | The Valley of Elah | Maresha | Lachish
Dead Sea : Dead Sea | Jericho | Qumran | Ein Gedi | Masada
Negev : Beersheba | Arad | Avdat | Timna
JORDAN
Northern Section : Gadara | Pella | Ajloun | Jerash | Umm el-Jimal
Central Section : Iraq al-Amir | Baptismal | Mount Nebo | Madaba | Machaerus | Um ar-Rasas
Grazing Land : Karak
Desert : Desert Retreats | Tafilah | Shobak | Little Pettra | Patra | Aqaba | Wadi Rum