Provenance and Dating of Artifacts from the Biblical Period
Artifacts are one of the most important ways historians reconstruct the past, using layers of excavation to establish the chronology of the sites they excavate.
The artifacts from the biblical period included in the Posen Library consist of objects from sites that were clearly Israelite during the period from which they came or of foreign objects (reliefs) that depict Israelites or shed light on their culture. We have generally limited our selections to objects that are sufficiently intact to show what they looked like originally. In a small number of cases, when no clear photograph is available, we show artists’ reconstructions. We have avoided objects with unclear provenance that could be modern fabrications.
The objects are dated by archaeological period and the century or year(s) within that period. For example, “Iron Age I, twelfth century BCE” means that the object is from Iron Age I (which covers 1200 to 980 BCE), from the first hundred years of that period. In most cases the dates are only approximate.