Early Iron Age Radiometric Dates from Tel Dor: Preliminary Implications for Phoenicia and Beyond

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The absolute date of the Iron Age I and IIa periods in Israel, and by inference in the Southern Levant at large, are to date among the hottest debated issues in Syro-Palestinian archaeology. As there are no pegs of absolute chronology throughout this range, conventional chronology had been established on proposed correlations of the material record with events and social phenomena as portrayed in historical and literary sources, chiefly the Hebrew Bible. With the growing impact of so-called "revisionist" notions in Biblical studies, which to various extents question the historicity of the Bible, it is imperative to try to establish a chronological framework for the Iron I-IIa range that is independent of historical and so forth considerations, inter alia in order to be able to offer an independent archaeological perspective of the biblical debate. The most obvious solution is to attempt a radiocarbon-based chronology. This paper explores the possible implications of a sequence of 22 radiometric dates obtained from a detailed Iron I-IIa stratigraphic/ceramic sequence at Tel Dor, on Israel's Mediterranean coast. To date, this is the largest such sequence from any single early Iron Age site in Israel. Having been part of the Phoenician commercial sphere in the early Iron Age, Dor offers a variegated sequence of ceramics that have a significant spatial distribution beyond Phoenicia, and thus transcend regional differences and enable correlation with the surrounding regions. By and large, the absolute dates of these ceramics by the Dor radiometric chronology are up to a century lower than those established by conventional Palestinian ceramic chronology. The ramifications of the lower Dor dates for some Phoenician, Israelite, and Cypriot early Iron Age archaeological issues are explored.

Response to Comment on “ 14 C Dates from Tel Rehov: Iron-Age Chronology, Pharaohs, and Hebrew Kings”

“…The published dates of Tel Dor (10) and forthcoming dates of Megiddo (11) are said to support a Low Chronology (12) and contradict our results for Tel Rehov. More research concerning the reproducibility of 14 C dates among labs involved, as outlined above (8,9), may resolve this contradiction.…”

Recent radiocarbon results and King Solomon

“…In recent years, a large number of samples from several key sites -such as Dor, Rehov, Beth-shean, Tel Hadar and Megiddo -were sent to different laboratories for 14 C analysis. Two important sets of dates -from Dor (Gilboa & Sharon 2001;Sharon 2001) and from Tel Rehov and Beth-shean (Mazar & Carmi 2001) -have recently been published. The data correspond to two destruction horizons (each based on similarities in pottery assemblages) known from several key sites in Northern Israel.…”

‘Transition Dating’ – a Heuristic Mathematical Approach to the Collation of Radiocarbon Dates from Stratified Sequences

“…This work is a part of the study conducted with Ayelet Gilboa, Israel Carmi, and Elisabetta Boaretto to investigate the historicity of the "united monarchy" of David and Solomon as described in the Bible (cf. in this volume: Gilboa 2001 and Sharon;Mazar and Carmi 2001;Bruins and van der Plicht 2001; for a recent book-size exposition see Handy 1997). The chronological dilemma is whether the archaeological horizon (designated hereafter "Ir2a") attributed to this putatively historical period does indeed cover the 10th century BCE, or it is some 50-100 years later into the 9th century (Finkelstein 1996(Finkelstein , 1998.…”