» Home > In the News

Chronological Matters

4 February 2010
Ancient history

Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines and Early History, Atlanta, Society of Biblical Literature: 2009 … an in-depth study of the different groups associated with Palestine at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age. The chronology is conventional but this is an important study of a period of history often misrepresented by historians. It concerns the actual origins of Israel.

Current World Archaeology February 2010 … Lefkandi in Euboea, a Greek island close to the mainland, it is claimed, has brought the Dark Ages to light as LHIIIB and LHIIIC and Geometric pottery have been discovered in a close association. The Dark Age, roughly 1100-750BC, belongs to those sites destroyed and abandoned at the end of the Late Bronze Age (roughly 1150BC) – for whatever reason. Until now the Dark Ages were only known from a few cemetaries and some poorly made (post-disaster) pottery (the sub-Mycenaean group). This was followed, in conventional chronology by prote-geometric and Geometric wares (of the 8th and 7th centuries BC). Lefkandi appears to have flourished during LHIIIC – when many other Mycenaean cities had foundered. Three stages have been observed, classified as LHIIIC 1, 2 and 3. A huge cemetary covering LHIIIC has also been found, and the archaeology has mixed LB and Iron Age material. It is noticable that from the article any Early Iron Age material is defined as 10th or 9th centuries rather than 8th or 7th so although the site is said to bridge the Dark Age gap it is being interpreted solely from the assumption such a Dark Age did in actuality exist 

Skip to content