E.g., Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed (NY: Free Press, 2001), p. 68 (“Archaeological investigations indicate that Edom reached statehood only under Assyrian auspices in the seventh century B.C.E. Before that period it was a sparsely settled fringe area inhabited mainly by pastoral nomads.”) and p. 40 (“From the Assyrian sources we know that there were no real kings and no state in Edom before the late eighth century B.C.E. Edom appears in ancient records as a distinct entity only after the conquest of the region by Assyria ... The archaeological evidence is also clear: the first large-scale wave of settlement in Edom accompanied by the establishment of large settlements and fortresses may have started in the late eighth century B.C.E. but reached a peak only in the seventh and early sixth century B.C.E.”).