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“Joshua fit the battle of Jericho,” the old spiritual proclaims, “and the walls came tumbling down.” But did he, and did they? Stirring as the words of the spiritual may be, scholars until now would have lent little credence to the accuracy of either the song or to the Biblical account that inspired it. Following the lead of Jericho’s most recent excavator, the late Dame Kathleen Kenyon, archaeologists have concluded there was little at Jericho to conquer when the Bible says Joshua conquered it. With the publication of details of Kenyon’s work, however, Bryant Wood, in “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?” reopens an archaeological case long thought to have been shut. Marshaling a host of diverse evidence—pottery types, stratigraphic data, Egyptian royal scarabs, a carbon-14 date, seismic activity in the region and, believe it or not, tumbled walls—Wood arrives at some surprising conclusions about Jericho in the late Bronze Age, the period prior to Israel’s emergence in Canaan.

Wood is a visiting professor in the department of Near Eastern studies at the University of Toronto, where he received his Ph.D. in 1985. He began his archaeological and Biblical studies in 1973, after a career as a nuclear engineer. Wood’s field experience includes positions as field supervisor of the Khirbet Nisya excavation in Israel; survey archaeologist and area supervisor of the Wadi Tumilat excavation at Tell el-Maskhuta, in Egypt; and co-director of the Northern Jordan Dam Survey Project. In addition to numerous articles, Wood has also written entries in the forthcoming Anchor Bible Dictionary.

What has the intrigue of a Ludlum novel and the tragedy of a world denied enlightenment at the whim of a few men? The ongoing scandal over the still-secret, unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, of course. In a special “Dead Sea Scrolls” section, BAR presents a potpourri of recent developments, beginning with a new kind of puppet show described in “Dead Sea Scroll Variation on ‘Show and Tell’—It’s Called ‘Tell, But No Show.’” This incredible event, to be staged at the Biblical Archaeology Congress in Jerusalem next summer, highlights the dismaying fact that the recent “reassignment” of the Damascus Documents, some of the most eagerly awaited of the Dead Sea Scrolls, may not be what it seemed to be. Other pieces in this special section reveal the existence of a Dead Sea Scroll concordance, suppressed for more than 20 years, but now available at the Harvard Divinity School library and possibly at the Baltimore Hebrew University library; a denunciation of the delay by a leading Dead Sea Scroll scholar, Joseph Fitzmyer; a scroll editor’s answer to the critics; and the first publication of a tantalizing Dead Sea Scroll fragment with parallels to the Gospel of Luke’s infancy narrative.

Our survey of “Ekron of the Philistines” (modern-day Tel Miqne), which began in “Ekron of the Philistines, Part I: Where They Came From, How They Settled Down and the Place They Worshiped In,” BAR 16:01, was so studded with important finds and fascinating historical detail that a single issue could not contain them all. The first portion of the two-part article, by Hebrew University professor Trude Dothan, a co-director of the Tel Miqne/Ekron Excavation Project, took us only up to the year 1000 B.C.E., roughly the year Philistine Ekron was destroyed, possibly by King David. In “Ekron of the Philistines, Part II: Olive-Oil Suppliers to the World,” Seymour Gitin shows that Ekron went into a nearly three-hundred-year decline, after which it enjoyed a phoenix-like rebirth in the seventh century B.C.E. that transformed it into a major industrial center. Gitin describes not only the pressing (sorry!) issue of olive-oil production, but also focuses on cultic practices and on the domestic areas where Ekronites, rich and ordinary, lived.

Gitin, co-director with Dothan of the Tel Miqne/Ekron excavations, is director and professor of archaeology at the W.F. Albright Institute in Jerusalem. In addition to Tel Miqne/Ekron, he has excavated at Gezer, Jebel Qa’aqir and Tel Dor. His two-volume Gezer III, a report on the 1972–1974 excavations, is in press. He is also the initiator and project director of Excavations and Surveys in Israel.

Amid the hustle and bustle of the combined Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion, held in Anaheim, California, this past November, two celebrations held there merit special mention: the 25th anniversaries of the Anchor Bible Series and of the excavations at Gezer. The first honored David Noel Freedman, the esteemed editor of the highly respected and popular (1.5 million copies sold) Bible commentary, while the second reviewed the accomplishments at a dig site that was the training ground for some of the great names in archaeology today. BAR editor Hershel Shanks reports on both of these happy—and significant—fetes in “Celebrating at the Annual Meeting.” And in the sidebar “Should You Go to the Annual Meeting?” he helps answer a question many BAR readers may have been asking themselves about this huge yearly conclave.

Those readers who missed our regular Museum Guide last issue can rest assured that the department is alive and well. In fact, we used the brief hiatus to pull together something readers have long been asking us for: a guide to foreign museums that have significant collections in the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean worlds. Our survey kicks off in this issue in Museum Guide and will continue in future issues. Combined with the guides to North American museums that appeared in Museum Guide, BAR 15:05 and Museum Guide, BAR 15:06, BAR readers will be well armed to enjoy the best of archaeology when they travel here or abroad.

What were the best BAR articles of 1989? Two distinguished judges answer this question with their selection of the first-and second-prize winners of BAR’s Fellner Awards. To compare your opinion with theirs, turn to BARlines.