Jericho’s Walls: Kenyon, Wood, and Radiocarbon Calibration Fights
Kathleen Kenyon’s digs at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) placed the famous walled city’s terminal destruction in the Middle Bronze (~1550 BCE range in her synthesis), undermining popular Late Bronze “Joshua” chronologies. Bryant Wood and Associates for Biblical Research revived a ~1400 BCE LB destruction reading from pottery/scarabs; Piotr Bienkowski and others rejected it.
Excavation and Field Record
High-precision Radiocarbon results on short-lived cereals support late MBA destruction windows closer to Kenyon than Wood. Biblical archaeology’s radiocarbon calibration battlefield.
People, places, and dates that keep recurring in the primary record include: Kenyon; Wood vs Bienkowski BAR exchanges; Bruins & van der Plicht Radiocarbon Jericho papers; Tell es-Sultan.. Open first: https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/dating-jerichos-destruction-bienkowski-is-wrong-on-all-counts/ before secondary retellings.
Chronology and Method Fights
Kenyon; Wood vs Bienkowski BAR exchanges; Bruins & van der Plicht Radiocarbon Jericho papers; Tell es-Sultan.
Keep this institutional page in the working set: https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/jericho-was-destroyed-in-the-middle-bronze-age-not-the-late-bronze-age/. Museum statements, dig reports, and court or committee PDFs outrank viral summaries here.
Fringe Readings Versus Dig Notes
Excavation and radiocarbon dispute documented. Treating any single date as cinematic proof of the Book of Joshua is theological overclaim, not field consensus.
Third load-bearing URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0033822200030666. Untethered claims stay in the contested column.
Calibration Battlefield at Tell es-Sultan
This page holds “Jericho’s Walls: Kenyon, Wood, and Radiocarbon Calibration Fights” to dated instruments—digs, museums, courts, papers—then marks reception and fringe as reception and fringe. Neighbor links are navigation, not evidence.
Kenyon, Wood, and short-lived radiocarbon samples are the battlefield—not a film of Joshua.