Was Khirbet Qeiyafa a "cultic compound?"

INTERPRETING ARCHAEOLOGY: New Theory for Khirbet Qeiyafa: Not King David’s City but a Vast Cultic Compound. No consensus was ever reached about the fortified hilltop site of Qeiyafa in central Israel, but now we have a whole new theory for everybody to argue about (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

A 3,000-year-old walled hilltop city in central Israel is the archaeological gift that keeps on giving. Is that a palace archaeologists found there and, if so, was it King David’s? Was this an Iron Age stronghold manned by bristling warriors – and if it was, whose warriors? Judahite, Israelite, Canaanite, Philistine, perchance? And why did its story end after a mere 20 or 30 years?

This article will bring you no answers, but does present a startling new theory. Prof. Emeritus David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University, publishing in the Israel Exploration Journal, postulates that Iron Age Qeiyafa was not a walled city. It was a vast walled cultic compound.

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I am not an archaeologist, so you should probably ignore what I think about this. But my personal rule of thumb is, if archaeologists refer to a site or artifact as "cultic" or "ritual" it means they haven't a clue what the thing is.

I think that principle holds up well here. But read the article and see what you think.

For PaleoJudaica posts on the Khirbet Qeiyafa excavations and the inscriptions, Iron Age public buildings, and miniature shrines found there, see here, here and here and follow the many links.

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