Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2016
Features
During the Iron Age, when Israel and Judah ruled Canaan, the kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom ruled east of the Jordan River. They and their gods are featured in the Bible. Recent archaeological discoveries vastly increase our understanding of these kingdoms and their religion.
Ancient Israelites didn’t eat pigs. Philistines did. Therefore if you are excavating and find lots of pig bones at your site, it can’t be Israelite—or can it? A new survey brings this conventional wisdom into question with surprising results.
Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is one of the world’s holiest sites; archaeological excavations are prohibited here. But, in November 1999, the Islamic trust that controls the Islamic structures on the site bulldozed a massive area in the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount and dumped the excavated debris into the Kidron Valley. Two archaeologists are running a pioneering project to wet-sift this debris to search for Temple Mount artifacts that have been concealed for centuries.
More than a hundred colorful polished stone tiles have been recovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. The tiles reveal what the Temple Mount floors looked like in Herod’s time. They were paved in a technique called opus sectile.