A03_16

A radiocarbon chronology for Iron Age Jerusalem: Hallstatt Plateau, known age events, and regional offsets

Regev J¹, Uziel J², Gadot Y³, Ben-Ami D², Mintz E¹, Regev L¹, Boaretto E¹

¹Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, ²Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem, Israel, ³Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

The Iron Age in Jerusalem, covering the 13th to 6th centuries BC, is one of the most excavated, studied, and debated topics in the southern Levant archaeology. Much of the interest has been sparked and fuelled by the ancient texts relating to Jerusalem and, in particular, the biblical narrative, also attracting wide public attention.

However, these events were never anchored with an absolute chronology based on independent radiocarbon dates. Only recently, we have integrated the microarchaeology-based radiocarbon sampling to Jerusalem, to build an absolute and accurate chronology. 

We have studied three areas in the “City of David,“ covering the entire Iron Age period. One of the major challenges for chronology was the Halstatt plateau. Samples dating between the 8th-6th centuries BC all give similar calibrated ranges coinciding with the later part of the Judean kingdom. We exposed superimposed pottery-rich floors, from which in-situ contexts were characterized and dated. These measurements allowed for “short-lived wiggle matching” through stratigraphic modeling, consequently providing a high precision dating even during the Hallstatt plateau.

We high-precision dated a context relating to the earthquake mentioned in the book of Amos and several contexts from the time of destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BC. The stratigraphic sequences and events, considered historically well established, provided an opportunity to assess the existence of regional differences in past ¹⁴C concentrations. The dates measured from several structures occupied till the Iron IIC showed a discrepancy between the meager quantity of early pottery types vs. the significant presence of early dates.