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A destruction of Jericho's walls dates archeologically to around 1550 BC in the 16th century BC at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, by a siege or an earthquake in the context of a burn layer, called City IV destruction. Opinions differ as to whether they are the walls referred to in the Bible. According to one biblical chronology, the Israelites destroyed Jericho after its walls fell out around 1407 BC at the end of the 15th century. Originally, John Garstang's excavation in the 1930s dated Jericho's destruction to around 1400 BC, in confirmation, but like much early biblical archaeology, his work became criticised for using the Bible to interpret the evidence rather than letting the facts on the ground draw their own conclusions. Kathleen Kenyon's excavation in the 1950s redated it to around 1550 BC, a date that most archeologists support.[4][5] In 1990, Bryant Wood critiqued Kenyon's work after her field notes became fully available. Observing ambiguities and relying on the only available carbon dating of the burn layer, which yielded a date of 1410 BC plus or minus 40 years, Wood dated the destruction to this carbon dating, confirming Garstang and the biblical chronology. Unfortunately, this carbon date was itself the result of faulty calibration. In 1995, Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht used high-precision radiocarbon dating for eighteen samples from Jericho, including six samples of charred cereal grains from the burn layer, and overall dated the destruction to an average 1562 BC plus or minus 38 years.(Radiocarbon Vol. 37, Number 2, 1995.)[3][4] Kenyon's date of around 1550 BC is more secure than ever. Notably, many other Canaanite cities were destroyed around this time.

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1. Bryant Wood says: Kenyon asserted that there was no city here in the Late Bronze period (1550-1200 BC) because she found no imported Cypriot pottery, such as characterizes the LB finds from tombs at Megiddo. On the other hand, both she and her predecessor, Garstang, did find lots of ordinary pots which are typical of the Late Bronze. It appears, moreover, that Garstang did find Cypriot ware, though he did not recognize it as such. Even without this, however, the absence of a certain kind of pot proves nothing. Unlike Megiddo, Jericho was not a big wealthy city on a major trade route, so it would not have had such pots. Besides, Kenyon dug in what seems to have been a poor section, where people would not have had expensive, imported vessels.



Problems with Wood's argument: Cypriot pottery was imported to the land in the Middle Bronze period, but its import became massive in the Late Bronze Age. Since Kenyon's time, archaeologists have found it not just at Megiddo, but at many of the other 29 sites they identify as Late Bronze - in the Jordan Valley as well. The same is true for Mycenean pottery. The import of both stopped abruptly at the end of the Late Bronze, before 1200 BC. On the other hand, the local pottery of the Middle Bronze period evolved very gradually into the Late Bronze, and it is hard to distinguish between them. Cypriot and Mycenean ware, therefore, constitute a clear and firm ceramic indicator for the existence of a city in the Late Bronze Age. (See Mazar, pp. 218, 261- 264.)

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