THE LARGE RUIN IN JERUSALEM excavated by Eilat Mazar was in the news again last week in Ha'aretz ("A debate of biblical proportions"). There's some interesting new information, especially interviews with other archaeologists and some details about the stratigraphy which call into question a strictly 10th-century date. Excerpts (but read it all):

Nor does Professor Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology, a leader of the band of Israeli archaeologists who doubt David's greatness, share Mazar's exuberance, which he terms a messianic outburst. "Once every few years, they find something in Jerusalem that seems to confirm the biblical description of the magnitude of the kingdom in the time of David. After a while, it turns out that there is no real substance to the findings, and the excitement subsides, until the next outburst," he says.

[...]

Professor Finkelstein has visited the City of David excavation, and says that he was impressed by two of the walls built of large stones, but that it is very difficult to date them precisely because of construction work in the area over the years. "One thing that can be said with certainty is that these walls were built before the Roman period [which begins in the late first century BCE]. Between that and the conclusion that these are the foundation walls of a palace from the period of King David is a pretty far stretch," adds Finkelstein.

Finkelstein says the latest of the many pottery shards found in the earthen fill on which the walls were built are circa the 9th century BCE or even later - and not the 12th or 11th centuries, as Mazar claims. He links the pottery to a structure that was discovered in Area G, not far from the site of Mazar's dig. This structure, which is called the Stepped Stone Structure, is a retaining wall that was built to prevent the collapse of the slope. Finkelstein says that pottery from the 9th century BCE, and maybe even from the 8th century BCE, was also found in the Stepped Stone Structure.

"Based on these findings, it may be possible to conclude that the walls in Mazar's excavation are from the 9th century or the early 8th century BCE," he says. "That is an important finding, because it describes an interim stage in the development of Jerusalem from a small and pretty meager village, as it was in the 10th century BCE, into an important, large and fortified provincial city. But it arrived at this status not in the 10th century BCE, but rather in the 8th century BCE, about 250 years after David's time."

This is obviously a debate that is going to go on for a long time, and it won't even get properly started until the site is published fully -- which undoubtedly will take some years.

(Heads-up, Mladen Popovic.)