Biblical Archaeology Review

See Neil A. Silberman, “Petrie and the Founding Fathers,” in Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990, Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), pp. 545–554. The following discussion is based on this most revealing essay.

This introduction to the intricate subject of interpretation in Biblical archaeology is indebted to the pioneer discussions of Neil Silberman, William G. Dever, Roger Moorey, Talia Shay and others who have laid the foundations of this new critical field of inquiry.

William G. Dever, “Archaeological Method in Israel: A Continuing Revolution,” Biblical Archaeologist 43 (1980), p. 41.

Julian Thomas and Christopher Tilley, “TAG and ‘Post-modernism’: A Reply to John Bintliff,” Antiquity 66 (1992), pp. 106–114.

For brief summaries of the main tenets of the New Archaeology, see: Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Gordon R. Willey and Jeremy A. Sabloff, A History of American Archaeology (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1974), pp. 183–208; Lawrence E. Toombs, “A Perspective on the New Archaeology,” in Leo G. Perdue, Lawrence E. Toombs and Gary L. Johnson, eds., Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation, Essays in Memory of D. Glen Rose (Atlanta: John Knox, 1987), pp. 41–52.

See Lewis R. Binford, In Pursuit of the Past (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983), especially pp. 19–26.

Anthony Giddens, Social Theory and Modern Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), p. 357.