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ABSTRACT. The traditional chronology of ancient Israel in the 11th-9th centuries BCE was constructed mainly by correlating archaeological phenomena with biblical narratives and with Bible-derived chronology. The chronology of Cyprus and Greece, and hence of points further west, are in turn based on that of the Levant. Thus, a newly proposed chronology, about 75-100 yr lower than the conventional one, bears crucial implications not only for biblical history and historiography but also for cultural processes around the Mediterranean. A comprehensive radiocarbon program was initiated to try and resolve this dilemma. It involves several hundreds of measurements from 21 sites in Israel. Creating the extensive databases necessary for the resolution of tight chronological problems typical of historical periods involves issues of quality control, statistical treatment, modeling, and robustness analysis. The results of the first phase of the dating program favor the new, lower chronology.

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Nearly a decade ago, a different chronology than the conventional absolute chronology for the early Iron Age in Israel was suggested. The new, lower chronology “transfers” Iron Age I and Iron Age IIA contexts in Israel, traditionally dated to the 11th and 10th centuries BCE, to the 10th and 9th centuries, respectively. Thus, it places the Iron I|IIA transition at about 920–900 BCE. This alternative chronology carries important implications for Israelite history, historiography, and Bible research, as well as for the chronologies of other regions around the Mediterranean. Relevant radiocarbon data sets published to date, which were measured at different sites by different laboratories, were claimed to be incompatible. Therefore, the question of agreement between laboratories and dating methods needs to be addressed at the outset of any study attempting to resolve such a tight chronological dilemma. This paper addresses results pertaining to this issue as part of a comprehensive attempt to date the early Iron Age in Israel based on many sites, employing different measuring techniques in 2 laboratories. The intercomparison results demonstrate that: a) the agreement between the 2 laboratories is well within the standard in the 14C community and that no bias can be detected in either laboratory; and b) calculating the Iron I|IIa transition in 3 different ways (twice independently by the measurements obtained at the 2 labs and then by combining the dates of both) indicates that the lower chronology is the preferable one.

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