Archaeology in the Study of Early Israel

Presentation by Dr Zachary Thomas.

It is widely agreed that earliest Israel had its origins among the nomadic populations of Late Bronze Canaan, but it is also widely assumed that the formation of monarchy in Israel only happened after the settlement of these nomads. The latter assumption relates to how nomads are typically envisioned in biblical studies and archaeology: marginal and incapable of social complexity. Recent archaeological developments in the southern Levant, particularly from the region of Edom, indicate both the potential complexity of nomads and the likelihood that many Israelites remained nomadic into the monarchic period. But nomads are also notoriously difficult to detect archaeologically in most circumstances, so they present an inescapable challenge for the "scientific" use of archaeology to assess the nature of early Israel and the historicity of the biblical narrative, especially that of Israel's earliest kings. 

Dr Zachary Thomas is Lecturer in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel at the ACU. He received his PhD from Macquarie University and was previously postdoctoral fellow at the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. He has worked with several excavation projects in Israel, including the Austrian Expedition to Lachish at present, and his research covers the early Iron Age archaeology of the southern Levant, the early history of Israel, and anthropological/theoretical approaches in Levantine archaeology.