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Bryant G. Wood

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Bryant G. Wood is a biblical archaeologist and Research Director of the Associates for Biblical Research. He is known for his 1990 redating of the destruction of Jericho to accord with the biblical chronology of c. 1400 BC - the proposal was later (1995) questioned, and Kathleen Kenyon's dating of c. 1550 BC remains the date for the site accepted in the majority of scholarly publications.

Biography

Wood attended Syracuse University, graduating with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, later earning a M.S. in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy NY. He later pursued Biblical and archaeological studies and received an M.A. in Biblical History from the University of Michigan in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Syro-Palestinian archaeology from the University of Toronto in 1985. Wood is a specialist in Canaanite pottery of the Late Bronze Age. He is author of The Sociology of Pottery in Ancient Palestine: The Ceramic Industry and the Diffusion of Ceramic Style in the Bronze and Iron Ages (1990), as well as numerous articles on archaeological subjects. In addition, Wood serves as editor of the quarterly publication Bible and Spade.

Wood received international attention for his proposed redating of ancient Jericho, arguing for the historicity of the Biblical account of the capture of the city by the Israelites. He has also written on entry of the Philistines into Canaan and on historicity of the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Jericho

According to the well-known story in the biblical book of Joshua, Jericho was the first Canaanite city to fall to the Israelites as they began their conquest of the Promised Land - an event which the Bible's internal chronology places at around 1406 BC. In the 1920s, John Garstang determined, based on two considerations and independently of the biblical chronology, that the destruction of Jericho must have occurred near the end of the Late Bronze Age, that is, about 1400 BC. These two considerations were first that the Late Bronze Age was the time in which large walled cities flourished in Canaan, and archaeology had already determined that this was not true in the centuries after 1400. The second consideration was that a match of Canaanite cites listed in the book of Joshua matched the mention of these cities in the annals of pharaohs of Egypt's 18th Dynasty, "more particularly in the records covering the hundred years between the conquests of Thutmose III and the decline of the Empire under Akhenaten, 1475-1375." After making these observations, Garstang noted that this happened to be in agreement with the Bible's chronological note in 1 Kings 6:1, but this was entirely secondary as far as he was concerned; in biblical interpretation he followed the doctrines of Julius Wellhausen, popular in Garstang's day, that theorized that the Bible's historical accounts were written at a much later date than the events described and thus were not completely trustworthy. Later, his excavations at Jericho in the early 1930s unearthed a destruction layer corresponding to the termination of City IV which was in agreement with the date of ca. 1400 that he had earlier postulated, and which he therefore identified with the biblical story of Joshua. This date was therefore derived by archaeological considerations from Canaan and from Egyptian historical records. It was not derived from the Bible and then imposed on archaeology, as is occasionally stated by those who have not read Garstang's own writings on the subject. It was therefore a shock when Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s, using more scientific methods than had been available to Garstang, redated Jericho City IV to 1550 BC and claimed to have found no signs of any habitation at all for the period around 1400 BC. Wood's 1990 reversion of City IV to Garstang's original 1400 BC therefore caused a considerable stir. Wood's arguments, based on on a reanalyis of pottery shards (a method which can provide highly accurate dates in the context of the ancient Near East), stratigraphic considerations, scarab evidence, and a single radiocarbon date, failed to convince some archaeologists, resulting in a controversy that continues to the present day.

Jericho and Radiocarbon dating

In 1995 additional C14 measurements were made on previously recovered samples from Jericho's City IV. The analysis of these samples was not made specifically to test the controversy surrounding Wood's dating, but were an effort to establish an independent radiocarbon chronology for Near Eastern archaeology (the existing chronology, initally established by William F. Albright in the 1930s, is based largely on changes in pottery types); the results were published by Bruins and van der Plicht (Radiocarbon 37:2,1995), who concluded that "the fortified Bronze Age city at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho City IV) was not destroyed by ca.1400 BC, as Wood (1990) suggested."

However, the weighted average C14 date of the short-lived grains was 3306 ± 7 BP. When calibrated using the current version of OxCal 4.0, this produces a 2-sigma age range (95% probability) of 1620-1530 BC. This date is difficult to reconcile with the Late Bronze I ceramics found by both Garstang and Kenyon (cooking pots with an internal lip and round-sided bowls with concentric painted rings inside, in particular), and the existence of 20 different layers recorded by Kenyon between the beginning of the MBIIc (Phase 32, c. 1650 BC) and the last phase of City IV. Since the Late Bronze I is dated from about 1550 to 1400 BC by most scholars, the archaeological evidence for this pottery found by both Garstang and Kenyon argues for dating the end of Jericho City IV later than supported by the C data, that is, in LBI rather than in MBIIc.

Previously, these radiocarbon dates for Jericho City IV persuaded many scholars as conclusive evidence in favor of Kenyon’s date of 1550 BC, vs. the later Garstang/Wood date of about 1400 BC. But in recent years there has been considerable controversy regarding the interpretation of radiocarbon data, particularly as to the disagreement of radiocarbon dating with accepted dates for ancient near eastern civilizations. An aspect of this controversy that is relevant to the dating of Jericho City IV is the current debate over the time of the Thera (Santorini) volcanic eruption at the end of the Minoan age, an eruption that spewed pumice and ash as far away as Egypt. Pottery that was well known to Egyptologists from its presence in Egypt and the Levant was found under the pumice layers on Thera, as were pieces of wood and leaves that could be used in giving a radiocarbon date to the catastrophe. The disagreement between these two methods of dating (pottery or stratigraphic vs. radiocarbon) has produced an enormous amount of literature. A 2006 article in Science magazine summarizes the controversy as follows: “Those who rely on dates from pottery styles and Egyptian inscriptions put the event at roughly 1500 B.C.E., whereas radiocarbon experts have consistently dated it between 100 and 150 years earlier.” Whereas the physical scientists are sure that their measurements are correct in dating the Santorini eruption to between 1660 and 1600 BC within 95% confidence levels, Egyptologists have largely refused to accept these dates because it would require moving the dates for Egypt's Middle Kingdom about 150 years earlier than is currently accepted. The Science article quotes Manfred Bietak as follows: ""I am not impressed," says Egyptologist Manfred Bietak of the University of Vienna in Austria, who prefers to rely on detailed Egyptian records for the same period . . . Bietak and others have argued that radiocarbon dating is not infallible and that the earlier date for the Thera eruption is contradicted by excavations in Egypt and on Thera itself."

If Bietak and the other Egyptologists are right, then radiocarbon dates taken from the approximate middle of the second millennium BC will consistently yield results that are from 100 to 150 years too early. This would mean that the radiocarbon dates cited above for Jericho City IV should be moved down that amount of time. Instead of supporting the Kenyon date of 1550 BC for the end of City IV, the adjusted radiocarbon dates would then support, within their probability of error, the Garstang/Wood dates of around 1400 BC.

Given the present unsettled state of this controversy over radiocarbon dates, it would seem that those who put their confidence in the C method will continue to favor 1550 BC for the destruction of Jericho, whereas those who follow the lead of Bietak and other Egyptologists should be open to the later date, in view of the fact that the required adjustments to C dating favors the Garstang/Wood chronology. Giving priority to the C dates and ignoring the caution expressed by Egyptologists in this matter would also seem to carry with it the necessity of advocating that all dates of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom should be moved back in time by 100 to 150 years.

Since the C dating controversy shows no sign of being settled soon to the satisfaction of all involved, it would seem that ultimately the question of the date of the destruction of Jericho should be discussed based on the more traditional stratigraphic studies that rely heavily on pottery types.

Khirbet el-Maqatir

Wood directs excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir, a city which he contends may be the biblical city of Ai. The traditional location of Ai, et-Tell, was excavated most recently by Joseph Callaway and was found to have been abandoned during the entirety of the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages. Khirbet el-Maqatir has produced pottery of the Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, Late Bronze I, Iron Age I, late Hellenistic/early Roman, and Byzantine periods. Based on initial finds, including a small Late Bronze I fortress in areas A, D, E, and G, Wood's "preliminary conclusion is that the LB I fortress meets the Biblical requirements to be tentatively identified as the fortress 'Ai, referred to in Josh. 7-8." Nearby Khirbet Nisya has also been suggested, by excavator David Livingstone, as an alternative location for Ai.

References

  1. Garstang 1931/1978, pp. 52-55.
  2. Ibid., p. 53.
  3. www.biblicalchronologist.org
  4. Bruins & van der Plicht, 1995, p218
  5. Abstract for Bruins and van der Plicht available here
  6. Wood (1990), 52.
  7. A recent overview can be found in Bietak and Höflmayer, pp. 13-23.
  8. "New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean," Science 312 (28 April 2006) p. 508).
  9. ibid., pp. 508, 509.
  10. Wood (2000), 29.

Bibliography

  • Manfred Bietak and Felix Höflmayer, "Introduction: High and Low Chronology," pp. 13-23 in The Synchronization of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millenium B.C. III, eds. Manfred Bietak and Ernst Czerny, Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschanften, 2007.
  • Bruins & van der Plicht, "Tell es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon Results of Short-Lived Cereal and Multiyear Charcoal Samples from the End of the Middle Bronze Age," Radiocarbon 37:2, 1995.
  • John Garstang, Joshua-Judges, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1978 reprint of 1931 edition.
  • Bryant G. Wood, "Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence," Biblical Archaeology Review 16(2) (March/April 1990): 44-58.
  • Bryant G. Wood, "Dating Jericho’s Destruction: Bienkowski Is Wrong on All Counts, Biblical Archaeology Review 16:05, Sep/Oct 1990.
  • Bryant G. Wood,"The Walls of Jericho," Bible and Spade 12:2 (1999), also available
  • Bryant G. Wood, The Philistines Enter Canaan, Biblical Archaeology Review 17:06, Nov/Dec 1991.
  • Bryant G. Wood, "Khirbet el-Maqatir, 1995-1998," Israel Exploration Journal 50 no. 1-2 (2000), 123-30.

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