Bettmann/Corbis

Mazar was not the first to make important discoveries in this part of Jerusalem. British archaeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon, who excavated there in the 1960s, found a portion of a large structure that she thought was part of a casemate wall (two parallel walls divided by perpendicular walls) built by King Solomon in the tenth century B.C.E. Mazar wondered whether Kenyon’s discovery was actually part of David’s palace—a possibility Kenyon apparently never considered because she thought the area was north of Jerusalem’s walls in the tenth century B.C.E.