Archaeological Views: Biblical Archaeology’s Architectural Bias

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The dramatic results of recent research in the copper mines of the ‘Arabah Valley call into question the way biblical-era nomadic societies have been treated in biblical archaeology.1

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Endnotes

1.
For a detailed discussion, see Erez Ben-Yosef, “The ‘Architectural Bias’ in Current Biblical Archaeology,” Vetus Testamentum 69 (2019), pp. 361–387.

2.
For a synthetic study of archaeological Edom, see Erez Ben-Yosef, “A False Contrast? On the Possibility of an Early Iron Age Nomadic Monarchy in the Arabah (Early Edom) and Its Implications to the Study of Ancient Israel,” in Oded Lipschits et al., eds., From Nomadism to Monarchy? “The Archaeology of the Settlement Period” Thirty Years Later (University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming).

3.
This notion is exemplified by the foundational book From Nomadism to Monarchy, by Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1994).