Description: Challenges the current scholarly consensus concerning the emergence and historicity of the Iron Age polity of biblical Edom and some of its neighbors, such as ancient Israel. Excavations and radiometric dating establish a new chronology for Edom, adding almost 500 more years to the Iron Age, including key periods of biblical history.
Brief description: Thomas E. Levy is a distinguished professor in the Department of Anthropology and directs the Levantine and cyber-archaeology laboratories at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mohammad Najjar is a lecturer in Near Eastern archaeology at Amman University, Jordan, and academic and curatorial adviser for the Museum With No Frontiers. Erez Ben-Yosef is a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and the head of the Levantine Archaeometallurgy Laboratory at Tel Aviv University.