Jericho Excavations

Overview

Tell es-Sultan is the mound of ancient Jericho beside a perennial spring. Excavators since 1868 have reached levels from the Neolithic tower to the Iron Age. The layer at issue for Joshua 6 is the violent end of the last Middle Bronze Age city. Its rampart had a stone revetment wall at the base topped by mudbrick. The city was burned, its walls collapsed, and houses were left with jars full of grain.

John Garstang (1930-1936) called this burned city 'City IV'. In 'The Fall of Bronze Age Jericho' (PEQ 1935) he dated its fall to about 1400 BCE. Kathleen Kenyon (1952-1958) showed that the collapsed 'double wall' Garstang had tied to the conquest belonged to the Early Bronze Age. Bryant Wood, who argued for the later date, grants this point. Kenyon dated City IV's destruction to the end of the Middle Bronze Age, about 1550 BCE, and allowed only a small, short-lived 14th-century occupation afterwards. In 1990 Bryant Wood (BAR 16:2) argued from Garstang's and Kenyon's pottery, the tomb scarabs and one radiocarbon date that the destruction came about 1400 BCE. Piotr Bienkowski answered him in the same magazine (BAR 16:5).

The Italian-Palestinian expedition has worked at the site since 1997. Its 2019-2023 report (Nigro & Yasine, Vicino Oriente 29, 2024) dates the MB city's final destruction by radiocarbon to 1550-1525 BCE. The same report documents Late Bronze Age reoccupation, with 15th-century pottery in rooms by Garstang's 'Middle Building', and reuse of the old wall line. It also documents Iron Age I-II houses and an Iron Age II ostracon.

What the evidence shows

• The last MB city (Sultan IVc / City IV) was destroyed by fire. Walls and floors were burned and mudbrick collapsed against the stone revetment (Garstang; Kenyon; Nigro & Yasine 2024 §§5-6).
• Storage jars full of grain lay in the destruction. Wood (1990) reports that Kenyon recovered 'six bushels of grain in one season'. The Sapienza team found an array of grain jars in destruction layer F.2331/2332 (Nigro & Yasine 2024 §6.2).
• Radiocarbon on short-lived cereal grains from Kenyon's final MB destruction gave a weighted average of 3306 ± 7 BP (Bruins & van der Plicht 1995), calibrated to the late 17th or 16th century BCE.
• New 14C: final destruction of the MB city at 1550-1525 BCE (House A341). The 'Hyksos Palace' fire is dated to about 1530 BCE and the earlier Sultan IVb palace destruction to 1635 BCE (Nigro & Yasine 2024, §§5.1, 6.2-6.3).
• The collapsed 'double wall' on the summit that Garstang tied to the conquest is Early Bronze Age. Kenyon established this, and Wood (1990) accepts it: 'In this she was right and Garstang wrong.'
• Late Bronze reoccupation (Sultan V): rooms by Garstang's 'Middle Building' yielded 15th-century BCE pottery, including a Cypriot White Slip II bowl. The same horizon produced the cuneiform tablet Garstang found (Nigro & Yasine 2024, §6.4). Windle (2026) cites Nigro (2023) for an LB II mudbrick wall, 2 m wide, set on top of the old Cyclopean wall.
• Wood (1990) reports one charcoal sample from the final Bronze Age destruction dated '1410 B.C.E., plus or minus 40 years' (BM-1790). The ABR repost now adds an editorial note flagging an update on this C-14 datum.
• Iron Age: houses of Sultan VIa (Iron I, radiocarbon 977 ± 45 BCE) sit on the Spring Hill. An ostracon (TS.19.P.1404/2) was found in 2019 in an Iron IIB surface layer. It is incised on an older EB IV sherd and reads ʾš wʾšt, 'man and woman' (Puech 2024).

Open questions

• When did City IV fall? J. Garstang (PEQ 67, 1935) put it about 1400 BCE, from destruction-level pottery, tomb scarabs and the absence of Mycenaean ware. K. Kenyon (Digging Up Jericho, 1957) put it about 1550 BCE. As Wood (1990) characterizes her case, it rested mainly on the absence of imported Cypriot pottery diagnostic of LB I. B. G. Wood (BAR 16:2, 1990, 44-58) answered with local LB I pottery forms, Garstang's Cypriot bichrome, a continuous scarab series (Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep III), 20 architectural phases that he said cannot fit in Kenyon's timespan, and C-14 BM-1790 at 1410 ± 40 BCE. P. Bienkowski (BAR 16:5, 1990) rejected Wood's pottery and stratigraphic arguments as flawed. The later radiocarbon on short-lived grain supports a 16th-century end: Bruins & van der Plicht (1995) at 3306 ± 7 BP, and Nigro & Yasine (2024) at 1550-1525 BCE. The pottery-and-scarab case for c. 1400 is Wood's.
• Was Jericho a walled city in the Late Bronze Age? Kenyon found only scant 14th-century occupation. Nigro & Yasine (2024) report 15th-century pottery and LB buildings over the burned palace. Windle (2026), citing Nigro (2023), reports an LB II mudbrick wall set on the old Cyclopean wall. What remains open is whether that wall existed in LB I or only later, and how large the LB town was.
• What was Iron Age Jericho? Nigro & Yasine (2024) hold that in Iron IIA (960-840 BCE) Jericho was 'in all likelihood a city of the Kingdom of Moab', and they tentatively identify it with Qeriho in the Mesha Stele. É. Puech (2024), publishing the ostracon from the same excavation, reads its ʾšt ('woman') as a form attested only in Phoenician and its Canaanite ancestor. He judges that the spelling 'is not in favour of a Benjaminite, Hebrew-speaking occupation' but points to a Canaanite one. He dates it by palaeography to about 900-730 BCE. The ostracon itself is not Moabite by Puech's reading.
• Unknown: the cause of the MB wall collapse (earthquake, assault, or fire damage). The excavation reports describe the collapse but do not settle its cause.

Since 2024

• 2024-08Nigro & Yasine publish the 2019-2023 interim report. New 14C dates put the final Middle Bronze destruction at 1550-1525 BCE and the 'Hyksos Palace' fire at about 1530 BCE. The report documents 15th-century LB rooms and argues for Moabite control of Jericho in Iron IIA (960-840 BCE). [1]
• 2024-08Puech publishes the ostracon found in 2019 (TS.19.P.1404/2), ʾš wʾšt, 'man and woman'. It comes from an Iron IIB layer and is dated palaeographically to about 900-730 BCE. Puech reads the language as Canaanite (Phoenician-type ʾšt), not Hebrew, and does not call it Moabite. [2]
• 2024-0920th campaign (May and September 2024), mainly conservation and sampling across Areas A-G and the Neolithic tower. [8]
• 2026-01Windle's 'Latest Research' series summarizes Nigro's case for a Late Bronze II mudbrick wall on the old Cyclopean wall and City V resettlement c. 1450 BCE. [9]

Sources

1. L. Nigro & J. Yasine, 'Interim report on the excavations at Tell es-Sultan, ancient Jericho (2019-2023): The Bronze and Iron Age cities', Vicino Oriente 29 (2024): 47-96. doi:10.53131/VO2724-587X2024-2_4 link excavation report
2. É. Puech, 'L'ostracon cananéen de Tell es-Sultan/Jéricho', Vicino Oriente 29 (2024): 97-99. doi:10.53131/VO2724-587X2024-2_5 link editio princeps
3. H. J. Bruins & J. van der Plicht, 'Tell es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon Results of Short-Lived Cereal and Multiyear Charcoal Samples from the End of the Middle Bronze Age', Radiocarbon 37/2 (1995): 213-220. doi:10.1017/S0033822200030666 link study
4. J. Garstang, 'The Fall of Bronze Age Jericho', Palestine Exploration Quarterly 67/2 (1935): 61-68. doi:10.1179/peq.1935.67.2.61 link excavation report
5. B. G. Wood, 'Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence', Biblical Archaeology Review 16/2 (March/April 1990): 44-58 link study
6. P. Bienkowski, 'Jericho Was Destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, Not the Late Bronze Age', Biblical Archaeology Review 16/5 (September/October 1990) link study
7. K. M. Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho: The Results of the Jericho Excavations, 1952-1956 (New York: Praeger, 1957) link excavation report
8. Sapienza Expedition to Tell es-Sultan/Jericho, 'Season 2024' (project website) link excavation report
9. B. Windle, 'Jericho: The Latest Research – Part Four', Bible Archaeology Report (30 January 2026) link study

Checked against new publications through 2026-09.