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A precise fresh geological dating of archaeological website in Jerusalem supports some of the key historic events described in the Bible , including the subsiding of the city , a major temblor and its eventual destruction by the Babylonians , according to a new cogitation .
The research gives an unprecedented chronology of the ancient city that cast light on its development , saidElisabetta Boaretto , a prof of archeologic sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot , Israel , and the older writer of the report , which was print April 29 in the journalPNAS .
The researchers studied archaeological layers of accumulated sediments at five sites in Jerusalem’s ancient “City of David” neighborhood, just south of the Temple Mount.
The authors studied sediment from human occupations andradioactive - carbon concentrations in charred seed to specify dateswithin the time full point have it off as the " Hallstatt tableland , " between 770 and 420 B.C. Past work had found that radiocarbon dating ca n’t pinpoint time with accuracy during this period .
It may be because lower solar natural action during that menses acquire less of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 — a form of carbon copy with eight neutron in its nucleus rather of the common six , which is used in carbon 14 dating to determine when a sample distribution originated .
The Hallstatt tableland is a cardinal understanding why so little of Jerusalem has been carbon 14 - dated , although the city is of bang-up archeological importance .
Archaeologists think the “City of David” is the most ancient part of Jerusalem. This illustration shows it in the ninth century B.C. during the First Temple period.
" The archaeologic record in Jerusalem was associated with times free-base on the Bible , or on pottery comparisons with other sites , " Boaretto said . " So it was never really absolutely dated . "
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Ancient city
The researchers examine 103 sample of seeds and other remains from five sites in Jerusalem ’s ancient City of David neighborhood , in the south of the Temple Mount .
The new approach applied radiocarbon date and a group of accurate analytical methods collectively call " microarchaeology " to the layer of deposit affiliate with the seeds and then verified their dates with mensuration of atmospherical carbon 14 from the growth mob of trees that develop between 624 and 572 B.C.
That effectively eliminated the uncertainty of most of the Hallstatt plateau sentence full stop , Boaretto read . They anchored their chronology using evidence of the Babylonian demolition in 586 B.C.
Among other revelations, the study showed that a fortified wall thought to have been built in the seventh century B.C. to protect the city from attack was actually built about 100 years earlier, after an earthquake in the eigth century B.C.
The cogitation let on Modern grounds that Jerusalem was settled between the 12th and 10th centuries B.C. and that the city had expatiate westwards in the ninth century B.C.
The researcher also regain evidence of an earthquake in the mid - eighth century B.C. : a layer of collapsed stones and damaged building material , followed by a period of Reconstruction Period . This event was bring up in the Bible but had never been firmly date .
The team saw preindication of the prolonged enjoyment of some sites after the seism and before the Babylonian encroachment , which indicated a time period of relative economic and political stability .
The researchers used a combination of radiocarbon dating, tree-ring dating, and analytical methods collectively termed “microarchaeology” to build a new chronology of the ancient city. This skull from an ancient bat was used to date one of the sediment layers.
The settlement period end with a monolithic inferno place as the Babylonian devastation in 586 B.C. , which is described in both the Bible and Neo - Babylonian phonograph record .
Radiocarbon chronology
Still , not everyone is win over that the new chronology is dependable .
ArchaeologistIsrael Finkelstein , a prof emeritus at Tel Aviv University who was n’t involved in the late study , told Live Science that many of the samples used in the study come from less - than - ideal archaeological context of use . That meant samples from only one of the five sites and a few others could be considered reliable , while the others " render only the earliest potential date for a give layer , " he state .
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And while the ability to radiocarbon - date layers during the Hallstatt tableland was a breakthrough , " this , too , is not destitute of difficulties , " Finkelstein suppose . That ’s because it was based on samples from a single room that had no direct evidence of the 8th - century seism nor the 6th - century Babylonian destruction .
However , " the undertaking of radiocarbon - dating Iron Age Jerusalem is a first gradation in an of import mission , " he said .
