The Beginning of the Iron Age in Edom: A Reply to Finkelstein

Abstract

This reply to Israel Finkelstein's ‘Edom in the Iron l’ (Levant XXIV, 1992) disputes his conclusions regarding Iron I evidence from numerous sites throughout Edom. The evidence of stratigraphy, pottery assemblages and fabrics demonstrates that the Iron Age material from the main excavated sites—Umm el-Biyara, Tawilan and Buseirah—does not pre-date the seventh century B.C. (Iron II). Methodologically, the clear evidence of stratigraphy from Transjordan must take precedence over out-of-context parallels from Palestine. The paper reports on the recent Liverpool Colloquium on the beginning of the Iron Age in southern Jordan, which proposed fieldwork at specific sites to test the early Iron Age sequence in northern Edom.