The Israelite Occupation of Canaan: An Account of the Archaeological Evidence

The archaeological time period known as the Iron Age—or the Israelite period, as I shall call it here—began in about 1,200 B.C. and lasted for about 600 years. In the Land of Israel, it ended with the destruction of the First Temple in 587 B.C. Scholars generally agree that the penetration and settlement by the Israelites into the various regions of the country began, at the latest, in the 13th century B.C. As I shall show, it quite probably began, in fact, in the 14th century. Thus the period of the “conquest” began in the Late Canaanite period, that is, in the Late Bronze Age (1,550 B.C.–1,200 B.C.), according to standard archaeological terminology.