Biblical Military History and Archaeomagnetism

[Chris]

Interesting article in The New York Times today (20 December) about a new technique being used to help sort out when things happened in the Bible.

In one part, the article discussed a project to check the authenticity of Old Testament accounts of various military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

There was mention made of the Hebrew Bible as well and how the data from this technique helps to confirm or deflate this or that hypothesis about who was were when, and what town was besieged and burned to the ground, etc.


Beg the pardon of members if this new technique has already been the subject of another discussion thread. 

Cheers,
Chris

[Erpingham]

Can't comment without seeing the article but archaeomagnetic dating isn't new - I was taught it at university in the 70s.  It needs clay or soil heated to a very high temperature then abandoned, never to be moved or heated to temperature again.  This makes it a bit limited as a dating technique which maybe why you've not come across it before.  Presumably, it has become more refined over time and capable of giving more precise results.

[Chris]

Oh dear . . . 

Well, I am only 50 years or so behind the times.

Should have done the work to include the link.

Hope this proves viewable and hope this provides more details as to the progress made with the technique.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/science/archaeology-bible-geomagnetism.html

Cheers,
Chris

[Erpingham]

Well, the shock there is that I remembered how the technique worked after 50 years   Not much actually seems to have changed.  The novelty is that they have created a comparative sequence keyed to certain known dates from the historical record.  I do have a slight concern, in that magnetic field fluctations don't always change uniformly.  But you can say "Site A dates to a similar time to site B, but different to site C" easily enough.  Interesting though.

[Ian61]

Well, the shock there is that I remembered how the technique worked after 50 years   Not much actually seems to have changed.  The novelty is that they have created a comparative sequence keyed to certain known dates from the historical record.  I do have a slight concern, in that magnetic field fluctations don't always change uniformly.  But you can say "Site A dates to a similar time to site B, but different to site C" easily enough.  Interesting though.

Ditto. I also studied this in the 70s plotting the movement of the tectonic plates over the surface of the earth but the magnetic pole is constantly moving as anyone who has had to use old ordinance survey maps will know so this is quite creditable.
(A quick aside might interest a few. I attended a lecture at Norman Lockyer observatory a few years ago about the aurora borealis. Apparently the Icelandic epics make little mention of them as they would not have seen them as Iceland does now because the magnetic pole was in a different enough place. They are seen best in a torus around the magnetic pole.)