Radiocarbon dating and microarchaeology untangle the history of Jerusalem's Temple Mount: A view from Wilson's Arch
Open accessAbstract
Radiocarbon dating is rarely applied in Classical and Post-Classical periods in the Eastern Mediterranean, as it is not considered precise enough to solve specific chronological questions, often causing the attribution of historic monuments to be based on circumstantial evidence. This research, applied in Jerusalem, presents a novel approach to solve this problem. Integrating fieldwork, stratigraphy, and microarchaeology analyses with intense radiocarbon dating of charred remains in building materials beneath Wilson's Arch, we absolutely dated monumental structures to very narrow windows of time-even to specific rulers. Wilson's Arch was initiated by Herod the Great and enlarged during the Roman Procurators, such as Pontius Pilatus, in a range of 70 years, rather than 700 years, as previously discussed by scholars. The theater-like structure is dated to the days of Emperor Hadrian and left unfinished before 132-136 AD. Through this approach, it is possible to solve archaeological riddles in intensely urban environments in the historical periods.
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All samples for radiocarbon dating were collected in the field for chronology-building purposes, combined with microarchaeological analyses of sediments as part of context in situ verification.
“All the samples for radiocarbon dating were collected in the field for chronology-building purposes, combined with microarchaeological analyses of sediments as part of context in situ verification (15, 16, 22, 23, 66, 67).”
From Radiocarbon chronology of Iron Age Jerusalem reveals calibration offsets and architectural developments (2024) · cites this paper as [22]
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Research works printed but not linked: 20
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Regev, J., Gadot, Y., Uziel, J., Chalaf, O., Shalev, Y., Roth, H., Shalom, N., Szanton, N., Bocher, E., Pearson, C. L., et al. (2024) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2321024121 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Regev, J., Uziel, J., Lieberman, T., Solomon, A., Gadot, Y., Ben-Ami, D., Regev, L., & Boaretto, E.
- Affiliations
- Weizmann Institute of Science (IL)
- Israel Antiquities Authority (IL)
- Bar-Ilan University (IL)
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- Corresponding author
- Boaretto, Elisabetta
- ORCID
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2020-06-03
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- e0233307
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7269203
- OpenAlex
- W3030747573
- Cited by
- 32
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 1 · 2021: 3
- FWCI
- 0.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Israel Science Foundation (1873/17)
- the Exilarch’s Foundation for the Dangoor Research Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (D-REAMS)
- Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Archaeology and Historical Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Biblical Studies and Interpretation
- Keywords
- Temple Mount, Jerusalem, microarchaeology, Herod the Great, Roman procurators, Emperor Hadrian, construction chronology, urban archaeology
- MeSH terms
- Archaeology, Bayes Theorem, Construction Materials, Facility Design and Construction, Humans, Israel, History, Ancient, Radiometric Dating, Construction Industry
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