Book Review: The Archaeology of the Bible by James K. Hoffmeier

As I was lecturing on Biblical Archaeology I was looking for a introduction to the field, which I could recommend to students. That’s why I read the book Archaeology of the Bible by James K. Hoffmeier.

The book starts with an introduction to archaeology, focusing particularly on the development of archaeology of the Holy Land. It also discusses the role of archaeology in the Study of the Bible. It is particularly in this section that it becomes clear that the book is squarely aimed at a Christian audience at a popular level. Hoffmeier discusses at length why archaeology should not be used so much to support the authenticity of the Bible, but rather as a way to provide a context in which to understand the Bible better.

The main part of the book is a chronological retelling of the Bible, illustrated with examples from archaeology. For example, when recounting the Joseph story, Hoffmeier describes dream interpretation in Egypt as we learn from ancient documents and inscriptions.
The scholarly debate Hoffmeier goes into in most detail is the date of the Exodus. Unfortunately, he does not explain the various theories advanced in recent years, which posit an alternative to the conquest narrative. A better description would have been good, especially as he then tries to rebut them by pointing out that the 19th-century understanding of the book of Joshua as an all-encompassing swift conquest is false. Rather, he maintains, the conquest was a slow process of settlement. As a result, the stark contrast between some of the theories, such as those by Israel Finkelstein, and the traditional understanding based more on the Bible does not become that clear.

The minimalist opinion that David never existed is mentioned and the Tell Dan and Mesha stelae are discussed. Hoffmeier also gives an overview of Solomon’s reign and supports the assumption that the gates at Gezer, Megiddo and Hazor were built while Solomon was on the throne. Similarly, the discussion of the divided kingdom focuses on the political history and archaeological finds which can illuminate the big events.

Only when he comes to the New Testament does Hoffmeier discuss aspects of daily life, mainly in the connection of illustrating Jesus’ parables. Indeed, I regard the New Testament section of the book as more interesting even though it is shorter. The main discussion here focuses on the burial place of Jesus. That involves the contrast between the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Garden Tomb. Hoffmeier also addresses the claim by Simcha Jacobvici to have found the tomb of Jesus’ family. The final chapter gives an overview of how the Roman Empire affected the cities in which the church first grew rapidly in the first century.

Overall, I think the book is a good survey of some of the most important archaeological finds and findings as they affect the Bible. However, it does not really attempt to give a picture of life in Biblical times, does not go into archaeological detail, and does not address some of the scholarly debates in depth.

The book is well illustrated, and certainly has many nice photos. It is well laid out and is printed on quality paper and at a reasonable price. I would recommend it as a book for anyone who just wants an easily readable, illustrated primer on Biblical Archaeology. I would not use it as a text for a class on Biblical Archaeology. I hope that it will lead people to explore the archaeology relating to the Bible more deeply.

Heritage and aesthetics

In the World Heritage Convention there are several references to aesthetics, both for cultural heritage and natural heritage.

One aspect of cultural heritage is:

sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view.

 

And under natural heritage, aesthetics seem to loom large:

natural features consisting of physical and biological formations or groups of such formations, which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view;

natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.

 

Somehow beauty and heritage go together. Is it that we value above all the beautiful that we have inherited? Is it that the beautiful is so vulnerable to destruction? I think that beauty and heritage are linked, both through the value we place on heritage and the sense of care we have towards it.

For many this is a problematic connection: do we not negate all objectivity if the heritage value of something depends on its aesthetics? Is what we consider beautiful not too subjective? I would argue that while beauty is not measurable and our notions of beauty change across time and culture and through personal experience, there are nevertheless places (and practices) that are innately beautiful. Yes, this beauty does depend to some extent on our comparative experience.

Taking and example from American natural heritage, Yosemite is innately beautiful, but we regard it even more so, because there are few places to rival its beauty. In a field of flowers the individual flower may be less noticed, though it may contribute to the overall impression.

I think that Yosemite is not only beautiful to the conditioned North American, but also to the Malaysian and the Native American. To a certain degree beauty transcends cultures. But clearly what we regard as beautiful is to some degree conditioned by our cultures. And maybe here heritage plays an important role in shaping our notions of beauty. In the beautiful sites we see, we can learn something about how our ancestors (not just our physical ancestors) saw beauty. And when we share the heritage of others around us, it opens up a world of beauty to us. Finally, through caring for our heritage (whether it be buildings, sites, or customs) we begin to be involved with the beautiful things and sometimes restore beauty to the neglected.

I have just started to think about the topic, but yes, beauty and heritage are connected.

At the start of this blog is a picture of Massada, the impressive dessert fortress built by Herod the Great. It may have an interesting history and therefore appeal to the thousands of tourists. It may be interesting from a construction perspective, but I think its main appeal is the stark dessert beauty of this archaeological site.

Archaeology and Heritage

I am in Christchurch, New Zealand, at the moment. In a city ravaged by an earthquake there is a lot of attention on what will be done with “heritage” buildings. Will they be torn down, rebuilt, strengthened to meet earthquake standards? When we use the word “heritage” in connection with buildings, it’s generally used to refer to those old buildings, which have been standing for a long time. They represent a memory of the old city that once was, the houses that stood before the current generation. Often the style of the heritage buildings is quite different from what would be built today. They reflect different values, different building practices, different ways of life. They not only look pretty, they are something given to us by a previous generation. They are inherited.

Archaeological sites normally were not given to us by previous generations. Often the habitations collapsed, were forgotten, and only later were discovered. But yet, the World Heritage Convention also calls them “cultural heritage”. One of the definitions of cultural heritage, for example, is:

works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including
archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical,
aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view.

I think it is right to count archaeological sites as heritage. Maybe these buildings have not purposely been given to future generations (and can we always say that about buildings?), but they give to us past lifeways, past expressions of how we humans lived in this world. And often this past impacts us today as well. We are not just totally re-inventing us today, we are affected by people who came before us.

I think that heritage considerations make archaeology much more relevant to us today than any considerations of scientific enquiry. We want to know about past people, because they are part of who we are today. I think this is very clearly the case with the people of Ancient Israel. Their lives still affect us today. For we still read the words, which they heard first.

Picturing a kitchen from Ancient Judah

In the last post I provided a basic map of large artifacts as found in a room at Tell Halif. It gives us an idea of how the space may have been used, how different activities were carried out together or in close proximity with each other. From there it is another step to provide a picture of the room. I used a 3-D imaging program and a rendering program to try to bring to life the room. Of course it’s just a rough computer graphic, but at least we can get some idea of what it might have looked like.

Entering through the doorway at the north end of the “kitchen”, the first thing a visitor would notice is the smoke that fills the room. Not that it is so dense that she cannot see, but the smell is everywhere, clings to the walls. In the light of the oil lamp, which is perched on a wall ledge just to the right of the door, she sees the smoke particles dancing in the air. The visitor notices the children playing knuckle-bones on the ground. The oldest has a bowl in his lap, sorting through the lentils picking out little pieces of dirt and stalks of straw and tosses them on the ground.

As if watching over them, a small clay figurine of a woman with prominent breasts sits in a niche in the wall. The visitor may notice the oil jar not far from the door. It sits on a jar ring made out of plaited straw. A dipper juglet lies on the floor not far from it. The small jug that leans against the jar ring is empty, but may be used to serve oil at meals. Beside them is a milk pot, presumably filled with butter. A cloth lid covers it. Not far is the large water jar—an old wine jar that is used that shows the signs of fermentation only too clearly. It’s no longer used to store the wine once it is ready. It sits on a jar stand of dried clay. Beside it are the cooking dishes, a cooking pot for the stew and the newer cooking jug. A few bowls sit beside the cooking pots. The meals are served in them. Two oil lamps, one on a stand, the other on the floor light the food preparation area. A quern and grinding stone also sit here on a cloth, which catches the wheat grits used in stews and salads. A wooden mortar and several stone pestles sit just beside the quern. The most important cooking utensils are all kept here in the center of the room, where the water jar and the heart of the kitchen is.

The visitor would probably hardly notice the small juglet and milk pot standing on the shelf in the corner. Instead, she might turn around to hear the greeting of the woman of the house. Separated from the cooking area by a line of storage jars, she kneels in front of the oven, from which the smoke rises lazily and drifts through a hole in the ceiling. The visitor walks through the gap between the storage jars. To her left are jars of oil and grape molasses; to her right is a wide jar, half-filled with grain (see Figure 104). The woman at the oven asks the visitor to wait a moment. She puts her hands into a small jar and dusts them with flour. Then she picks up one of the balls in the large bowl. Over the stone she works the dough into a flat bread and slaps it on the inside of the oven. She quickly takes another flattened piece of dough from the stone in front of her and also slaps it on the interior oven wall. She had flattened that bread before.

Now the woman of the house stands up, wipes her hands and invites the visitor to look at the large cloth for a mantle she just started weaving. She isn’t yet far along, but the border has an intricate pattern. She takes a pick-up stick from the side of the loom and points out the flowers woven into the edge. From a bowl beside the loom, she takes two balls of yarns and compares the colors. Suddenly she turns around, remembering the bread in the oven. With a stick she takes it out quickly and puts it in a bowl on top of some bread she baked before. Flattening a few more dough balls, she fills the oven again.

Not far from the oven is also the water-carrying jug. She probably used some water when mixing the dough. She now pours some water in a smaller jug and walks over to the corner. Here stand two wine jars, one to the side of the grinding basin, the other propped against the wall in a corner of the grinding basin (see Figure 105). Here is where the woman of the house grinds the flour for the bread. A grinding stone lies perched on the high stone. The woman takes the dipper juglet and takes some wine out of a jar. She pours it into the jug, adding it to the water and offers a drink to the visitor. She excuses herself, while she quickly intervenes into a dispute among the children. When she hurries back to the oven, the bread is already burnt at the edges. The visitor excuses herself. It seems that for the moment it’s just too busy in this kitchen.

Organization of space in a Judahite house

In 2008 and 2009 we uncovered large parts of a room at Tell Halif with indications that food was processed there during the late Iron Age. I studied the room as part of my Master’s thesis. This required careful restoration of many artifacts and placing them in (virtual) three-dimensional space. What became clear was that this room was used for many purposes. Particularly noticeable are the traces of a loom in one corner, a bread oven not far away, and storage and food processing material spread throughout the room. Some concentrations of different activities in certain spaces are apparent. It also seems that large storage jars were used to separate different activity areas in this room I called a “kitchen”. Here’s a map of the room showing the location of artifacts. I color-coded them to show what use-category I thought they belonged to. Please note that the extreme right of the room has not yet been fully excavated.


The breakage pattern indicates that generally that the artifacts were deposited were we found them and that most of them stood on the floor. Of course, we only have the remains of things that lasted through the millenia. There would have been more objects in the kitchen when the walls caved in and burried the room.
It clearly was a busy room. Currently it seems as if this was the central room of a house. IF that is true, the “kitchen” was probably the heart of a Judahite house. And it seems to have ruled over by women – at least most of the activities we found traces of in the “kitchen”, like weaving, grinding grain, and baking, were most likely carried out by women. Detailed studies like these can give us a better idea of what live in Ancient Judah might have been like. We need to combine this picture with evidence from many other spheres of life.

Anyone interested in reading the full thesis can download it here: http://sun.library.msstate.edu/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-10292012-150536/

Pottery restoration laboratory

There has been a pause in my posts over the last month while I was travelling around the world, including such important holidays as my honeymoon. Now it’s time to update this blog.

While excavation is the exciting part of archaeology, a lot more time has to be spent on laboratory work. Often, fewer people are involved in lab work, especially for academic projects. That means that a few people will work away long hours to be able to interpret the archaeological finds better.

One of the tasks, especially for Near Eastern archaeology, is pottery restoration. That’s what I was involved in at the Cobb Institute of Archaeology. Pottery restoration can be compared to a very large 3-D puzzle, with lots of games mixed together, no definite picture of what the final product should look like and no guarantee that all the pieces are there. Of course, people that know their pottery can guess from a single piece what pot it should belong to and where in the vessel it belongs. But it is still a lot of work requiring a lot of patience to put together a vessel. Large vessels are the hardest, because the different sides look quite different – they often lay in slightly different soils for thousands of years – and there is sometimes little clue where in the pots the shords belong to.

It is one help that pieces are gathered in baskets, which are location specific. It is very likely that potsherds belonging to one vessel are found close together. But sometimes we find potsherds from the same vessel some distance apart.

Here potsherds are arranged in baskets in the approximate location these baskets were collected in the field. In the back is a partially restored storage jar. We restored the jar by finding the base sherds and then looking from similar sherds from the basekts around these. Sometimes it is some other sherds that we use first.

The main difficulty is finding potsherds that fit together, but when we’ve achieved a fit, there is no doubt about it. It’s that satisfying “click” which tells the restorer that they’ve got the right potsherds. Often we assemble a few potsherds before we glue them together.

We use restorer’s glue B72, which can be desolved in acetone. The easiest way to apply the glue to the sherds is through the use of a syringe, in which it can also be mixed.

The first task is to balance the sherds so that the upper sherd is held on the lower by gravity. To do that the lower sherd is placed in rice and kept in position.

After applying the glue to the upper sherd, it is then carefully placed on the lower sherd and then left to dry for half an hour. The drying time can be sped up by applying heat. Sometimes several sherds need to be glued and it is best to glue additional sherds while the glue on the other seams is still flexible.

At the end the sherds hold together. The seam is clearly visible, but once all the sherds are put together, we know the overall shape of the vessel and can also tell things about height, volume, width, and use-wear.

We had over 20,000 potsherds registered in our laboratory from a few excavation areas. Each individual potsherd was numbered and weighed. In that way we could tell the distribution of pottery pieces across a room and draw conclusions about the formation processes. For example, an analysis of the distribution led me to conclude that most vessels in a room were on the floor when the building was destroyed and that there was minimal later intrusion.

Places in “Daughter of Lachish”

Sometimes people ask whether the places I described in the novel “Daughter of Lachish” are real. Yes, they are! The archaeological evidence is not always unequivocal and I added a lot of imagination to make them what they are in the novel, but they are based on real places, and often real archaeological finds.
Here is a Google map showing the loation of the most important places.

View Larger Map

They are
Lachish: Tell ed-Duweir or Tel Lachish. It is by now generally accepted that this tell represents the ancient city of Lachish. Level III was very likely the city destroyed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib.

Shechar: This is totally fictional village located on the slopes of the Nahal Lachish, opposite the modern moshav Amazya. Sherds from the Iron Age have been found in the vicinity and a village could have stood at this place, but no detailed excavations have been conducted.

Cave of Amnon: This is the Jerusalem Cave near Khirbet Beit Lei (Horva Loya). There are debates whether the inscriptions inside the cave came from the 8th century BCE or later. I may be wrong in attributing them to the late 8th century BCE, but some similar situation probably called for their incision.

Mareshah: This is the Tell Sandahanna of Arabic times and the Marissa of the Greek period. It is a prominent tell with impressive cistern systems. It is located just south of the modern kibbutz Beit Guvrin, near the prominent ruins of Roman, Roman-Byzantine and crusader times.

Libnah: When I wrote the book, I was not sure whether Tell Zeitah or Tel Burna were better contenders for the location of the city of Libnah. After having excavated at Tel Burna and reading the different arguments, I now believe that the ancient city of Libnah was more likely located at Tel Burna.

Moresheth-Gath: The town of Micah has been identified with Tel Goded (Tell ej-Judeideh), a prominent tell site north-east of Beit-Guvrin. It has a large well at the bottom of the tell and a cave system from Maccabean times. On the tell itself only few layers were found, but apparently only one layer belonging to the Iron Age. The tell was excavated early in the 20th century, so the records are quite sketchy. However, so far it seems that the town was not rebuilt after the destruction.

New Moresheth-Gath: I therefore place the new village just north of the town on a plateau across the saddle. A village stood here during Arab times and I have found Byzantine and Iron Age pottery on the site. But I have never heard of anyone finding good evidence of a settlement during the late Iron Age. I don’t think the area has been excavated or well researched. It is possible that a short-lived settlement stood at this place during the late Iron Age.

The cities of Hebron and Jerusalem are also shown on the map.