April 2022, ScientificAmerican.com 73partnered with the country’s Weizmann Institute of Science in
Rehovot to gather large numbers of radiocarbon samples to cali-
brate a more accurate chronology of Jerusalem’s past.
But the upgrade to Jerusalem archaeology does little to change
the controversy that accompanies every dig in and around the Old
City. The parking lot effort prompted angry Arab homeowners to
take the project to court amid charges that the excavation was
endangering their homes that loom along two sides of the deep pit.
And the pit itself will serve as the basement of a massive visitor’s
center owned and operated by a controversial right-wing Jewish
organization dedicated to settling more Jews in the area. “The
whole use of archaeology as a legitimizer of the state has become
a hallmark of Netanyahu,” says Tel Aviv’s Raphael Greenberg, refer-
ring to the former long-reigning Israeli prime minister.
Gadot insists that “Jerusalem should be explored just like Ath-
ens and Rome.” But unlike those two ancient capitals, this one
remains at the heart of one of the world’s most challenging—and
violent—predicaments. Science-based archaeology may have
arrived to stay, but the religion and politics that are part and par-
cel of any major excavation here remain largely unchanged. “No
amount of sieving, sherd counting, text criticism or ancient DNA
analysis can alter that equation,” Greenberg says.
L
Ast mAy, eilAt mAzAr passed away, but the Bible continues to
exert an enormous influence over excavations in Jerusalem
and across Israel. As the recent toilet discovery demonstrates,
any find related to Jerusalem’s biblical millennium is sure to make
its way into Israeli newspapers and Web sites and often into
American and European outlets. This coverage, in turn, can elicit
vital donations for excavations that are, particularly in Jerusalem,
often complicated and expensive endeavors. Much of the support
for Mazar’s digs, for example, came from a New York Jewish phi-
lanthropist and an unaccredited Christian college in Oklahoma.
With Mazar’s passing, Hebrew University’s Yosef Garfinkel is
taking up her biblical standard. Six weeks before Mazar’s death,
she called him to her bedside and asked him to continue her exca-
vations at the City of David National Park where she found her
putative palace. He remains unconvinced that she clinched her
case but hopes to find the necessary evidence by restarting the
dig in the near future.
Garfinkel just completed a series of excavations outside the city
that he says uncovered Judean settlements dating to not long after
1000 b.c.e. “We found the historical kingdom of King David,” he
insists. “It had fortified cities, writing and administration.” Fin-
kelstein, for one, is unimpressed, noting that the settlements sur-
vived only a few decades and reveal nothing directly about the size
or status of Jerusalem itself. In recent years he and his opponents
had narrowed their differences over the dating of key sites in and
around Jerusalem down to a few decades, but Garfinkel’s work
has revived the old fight over what the city looked like when the
Israelites arrived.
The resurgence of what Finkelstein sees as a traditional form
of biblical archaeology leaves him troubled. He wants to put Jeru-
salem in the wider context of a fluid ancient Middle East and set
aside the fixation on proving the existence of this or that monarch.
But “the wave of conservative scholarship is becoming stronger
and stronger,” he says. “It is not just Eilat Mazar and Yosi Garfin-
kel. It is quite depressing. We are losing the battle.”
To combat this trend, Finkelstein launched a new archaeology
program at the University of Haifa last fall that will emphasize
cutting-edge science, international collaboration and museum
studies with its own deep-pocketed supporters. “But of course,” he
adds, “the battle is bigger than archaeology.” Israel, like the U.S.,
is an increasingly polarized place, and those divisions are reflected
in research as well as in politics. Demonstrating the accuracy of
the Bible is not simply a matter of academic debate but part of a
larger culture war.
Palestinians remain largely on the sidelines. Al Jubeh, the
Birzeit University archaeologist, pins the ultimate blame for their
marginalization not on Jewish Zionists but on Western Christians
such as Robinson who were obsessed with the Old Testament. As
a result, “Jerusalem is the most excavated site in the world, and it
has come to tell an Israeli story,” he says. “I think in the end, how-
ever, there is only one narrative—the narrative of science.”
In a world of alternative facts, it’s a comforting thought. Yet sep-
arating science from the conflicts that cleave this city is clearly a
task of biblical proportions.FROM OUR ARCHIVES
Ancient Jerusalem. Kathleen M. Kenyon; July 1965.
scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa