Books in Brief

A Century of Biblical Archaeology

P.R.S. Moorey (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992) 205 pp., $14.99, paper

In this lucid survey of the history of archaeology in the Near East, especially in the areas now known as Israel and Jordan, Roger Moorey, keeper of antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and president of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, manages to include an extraordinary amount of detail within a small format. Six chronological chapters cover the following periods: The Birth of Biblical Archaeology (1800–1890); Excavations and Texts: Early Confrontations (1890–1925); The Golden Age of Biblical Archaeology (1925–1948); New Nations: New Methods (1948–1958); The Passing of the Old Order: Towards an Identity Crisis (1958 1974); The Growing Impact of the Natural and Social Sciences (1974–1990). Each chapter summarizes the principal excavations of the period and sketches the biographies of key scholars. Although the focus is on Palestine, discoveries throughout the Levant are treated when appropriate. Interwoven is a judicious discussion of the development of, and debates about, archaeological methods, and of the strengths and weaknesses of individual scholars as excavators and as interpreters.