72 Scientific American, April 2022Those imports fell off much later, probably because warfare between
competing Hellenistic kingdoms following the death of Alexander
the Great in the fourth century b.c.e. disrupted trade links.
This level of detail was wholly missing from previous biblical
archaeology. “When you can have a good control of stratigraphy,
you can start dealing with food habits and things like this,” Gadot
says. “Now we can excavate a home, analyze a family’s food habits
and understand their connection with the wider world.”
Biblical texts also paint an image of Judeans in this long era
turning inward, focusing on their temple cult that revolved around
a monotheistic deity and embracing strict dietary rules, as well as
taboos on animal and human images. But analysis of artifacts from
the parking lot paints a more nuanced picture. Boxwood from dis-
tant Anatolia showed that the city’s trade links were quite exten-
sive. And one Persian-period vessel with the face of an Egyptian
deity, presumed to be an import brought by an Egyptian or Phoe-
nician merchant, turned out to be fabricated in or near Jerusalem—
a sign that non-Judeans made their home in the city and brought
their own traditions with them.
Nor are dietary taboos as defining of Judeans as scholars once
thought. A June 2021 paper in Near Eastern Archaeology detailed
the discovery of an entire pig skeleton in what appears to be a
Judean home, not far from the city’s acropolis that once supported
the Jewish temple. The researchers concluded that not only was
pork consumed in the heart of the city but that “pigs were raised
for this purpose in the capital of Judah.” And although the park-
ing lot dig is focused heavily on biblical times, researchers there
also are studying a Roman and Byzantine villa and taking samples
from an eighth-century c.e. Arab latrine to determine the nature
of parasites that debilitated inhabitants.
The new science-heavy approach to archaeology means that
less of the work is done in the trenches and more is done in labs
such as those in the basement of Tel Aviv’s archaeology department
building. This effort is also far more international than in the past,
when the vast bulk of team members were Israeli Jews. Now Amer-
ican and European graduate students participate in the investiga-
tions in larger numbers, providing Israeli researchers with impor-
tant links to the outside world. Israeli archaeologists also haveA NIGHTTIME sound and light show highlighting the ancient
Judean past draws tourists to the City of David National Park,
operated by a right-wing Jewish organization within a largely
Arab neighborhood.