Jericho, ancient Tell es-Sultan, is the ideal proving ground for a faithful, historical-grammatical approach to Scripture and spade alike. Across more than a century, four major field efforts—German excavations under Sellin and Watzinger, the British campaign of John Garstang, the Wheeler–Kenyon stratigraphic excavation, and the modern Italian-Palestinian expedition—have generated an accumulating dossier of data. Read coherently, that dossier aligns with the biblical account that Jehovah devoted the city to destruction in the late fifteenth century B.C.E., in the opening days of Israel’s Conquest under Joshua. The work of Dr. Bryant G. Wood brought crucial clarity by integrating ceramics, stratigraphy, small finds, burn debris, and the peculiar “brick-ramp” taphonomy at the base of Jericho’s revetment wall. The following is a chronological history of those excavations, their findings, and their conclusions, culminating in why Wood is correct.

Early German Excavations Under Sellin and Watzinger (1907–1909)

The first scientific exposure of Jericho’s defenses came from the German team directed by Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger. Their campaigns established stratigraphic discipline for the mound and produced a body of architectural and small-find data that subsequent expeditions would repeatedly revisit. Their enduring methodological legacy included careful layer-by-layer excavation and systematic documentation—site maps, section drawings, and typological notes—practices that later teams, including Kenyon’s, openly built upon.

Importantly, Sellin and Watzinger uncovered a preserved segment of the lower mudbrick city wall on the north side, still standing to about eight feet, with houses built directly against it. This architectural survival uniquely fits the biblical portrait of domestic structures “in” the wall and provides a normal urban context for the narrative involving Rahab and the spies.

Their results framed Jericho as a fortified gateway city whose occupational sequence and destruction horizon could be correlated with broader Near Eastern chronology, an early attempt to align the tell’s layers with biblical history.

John Garstang’s Excavations and the City IV Destruction (1930–1936)

John Garstang’s British expedition deepened and widened the exposures, especially of the defenses and the domestic quarters. He reported a sudden and violent destruction marked by collapsed walls and a heavy burn—evidence he associated with the biblical fall of Jericho. Garstang argued for a destruction near 1400 B.C.E., correlating pottery, scarabs, and the architecture of the fortifications with a late fifteenth-century horizon (“City IV”).

Garstang’s contribution was not merely interpretive; it was also interdisciplinary. He consciously integrated the archaeological data with the biblical text, arguing that the conditions he uncovered—the state of the walls, the burn layer, and the assemblage—were consistent with Joshua 6.

Among the striking finds shared by Garstang and later by Kenyon were storerooms and domestic spaces containing jars filled with grain, scorched in place. In a normal siege, precious grain is consumed or looted; its archaeological abundance at Jericho powerfully signals a brief siege and a city devoted as ḥērem to Jehovah, rather than plundered by the attackers.

Kathleen Kenyon’s Stratigraphic Reassessment (1952–1958)

Kathleen Kenyon’s campaign—rightly celebrated for its methodological rigor—introduced the Wheeler–Kenyon grid and imposed stratigraphic exactitude upon Jericho’s complex mound. Her fieldwork produced unforgettable descriptions of a complete burn: “Walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire, and every room was filled with fallen bricks, timbers, and household utensils… the destruction was complete.”

Kenyon also documented, with exemplary clarity, an extraordinary taphonomic detail on the west side: piles of “fallen red bricks” nearly to the top of the stone revetment (KD). Those bricks derived from the mudbrick wall above the revetment—i.e., the very city wall—and lay heaped at its base. The geometry is unmistakable: a wall “fallen beneath itself,” exactly the configuration that would create a debris ramp up the glacis.

Yet Kenyon’s chronological conclusion departed sharply from Garstang’s. On ceramic and radiocarbon grounds as she interpreted them, she argued the main destruction occurred at the end of the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1550 B.C.E.) and that there was no flourishing Late Bronze Age city to match Joshua’s narrative. Her assessment, widely publicized in mid-century, insisted on the absence of LB occupation and therefore treated the biblical account as historically detached from Jericho’s destruction layer.

Kenyon’s methodological legacy is secure. But the chronological corollary she drew from the assemblage—“no LB city; no Joshua-Jericho”—rests on a particular reading of what should and should not be present in a local ceramic corpus, a point later challenged by Wood.

The Italian-Palestinian Jericho Expedition (1997–2023): Renewed Exposure, Modern Methods

Beginning in 1997, the Italian-Palestinian expedition reopened earlier trenches, cleaned critical profiles, and surveyed extensively with modern methods. This collaboration emphasized geophysics, digital documentation, and environmental archaeology to refine Jericho’s occupational sequence.

Fieldwork confirmed the very features that had always made Jericho singular in the Conquest discussion: a thick, citywide destruction burn; abundant charred grain untouched by looters; and—crucially—banked masses of fallen mudbricks against the revetment wall, precisely where Kenyon had described them. Photographs and sections from the renewed work visually anchor those brick piles, and even a published image shows a researcher literally standing with a foot on the remains of the collapsed wall from the 1997 locus.

The team also reported Late Bronze traces that fill in perceived occupational gaps, identifying LB II layers in parts of the tell despite later disturbances. That detection undermines the assertion that Jericho lacked LB occupation altogether and re-opens the chronological window demanded by Joshua.

Their broader, multi-period synthesis reinforced the defensible picture of Jericho as a long-lived urban center with MB fortifications, LB activity, and a catastrophic destruction that imprinted a signature burn across multiple exposures.

What the Archaeology Itself Displays: Burn, Brick, and Ban

When the major expeditions are set side by side, the convergence is remarkable. First, the burn: across exposures, there is a thick ash-and-debris matrix, with floors and walls reddened by intense heat—precisely what a city “devoted” and then burned would leave.

Second, the brick: multiple expeditions recorded fallen mudbrick heaped at the base of the revetment wall. This is the unusual collapse pattern that, in practical terms, creates a climbable debris ramp—the very thing the Hebrew idiom “fell beneath itself” would describe, and the very thing a rapid, “straight up” assault requires.

Third, the ban-behavior assemblage: both Garstang and Kenyon found jars full of grain, burnt in place, which is archeologically abnormal after a long siege but exactly what Joshua’s ḥērem commands predict when the attackers obey and do not plunder. Jehovah’s directive to devote the city explains why the valuables remained and burned.

Finally, the standing northern segment with houses built against the wall tangibly matches the Rahab narrative’s urban logic—houses on the wall, a preserved stretch amid broader collapse, and a plausible escape route toward the hills.

Re-examining Kenyon’s Date: What Was Concluded and Why It Was Contested

Kenyon’s great strength was method. Her stratigraphic excavation at Jericho revolutionized Levantine field practice and set a durable standard. But on dating, her conclusion of an end-MB destruction coupled with an absence of robust LB occupation elevated a negative argument—what she did not see—over positive taphonomic signals and over local ceramic variability.

Moreover, Kenyon’s own trench profiles and field descriptions inadvertently preserved the very signatures that sustain the biblical account: a catastrophic burn and a debris-ramp of fallen brick at the base of the revetment. Those observable facts were never in question; the debate is interpretive and chronological.

Dr. Bryant G. Wood’s Re-Dating and Integrated Case (1980s–1990s)

Against that backdrop, Dr. Bryant G. Wood undertook a comprehensive reassessment of Jericho’s destruction horizon. He focused on the Late Bronze ceramic repertoire in context, the stratigraphy of the burn layer, the treatment of small finds (including scarabs), and the character of the wall collapse. His core claim was straightforward: Jericho’s destruction belongs at the end of the fifteenth century B.C.E., not a century and a half earlier.

Wood argued that Kenyon’s ceramic criteria misread the local picture and that parallels exist between Jericho’s LB assemblage and other well-dated LB contexts in Canaan. He further noted that radiocarbon results, properly weighed within their archaeological context, do not preclude a ca. 1400 B.C.E. destruction.

Crucially, Wood’s synthesis absorbs the unmistakable field facts that every expedition recognized: a three-foot-thick burn with charred timbers and pottery; abundant grain left to burn; and the distinctive brick tumble forming a ramp against the revetment—features directly compatible with a brief siege during harvest under a ban, exactly as Joshua records.

Wood’s method is cumulative, not selective. He does not argue pottery alone. He insists on the convergence of architecture, taphonomy, ceramics, small finds, and Scripture’s own chronological markers.

The Excavations in Sequence: What Each Team Concluded

Sellin and Watzinger, at the dawn of scientific work on the tell, uncovered the north-wall survival with houses abutting it and set the methodological template for stratigraphic excavation at Jericho. Their legacy shaped everything that followed.

Garstang identified a sudden destruction with a burn and collapsed walls and placed that event near 1400 B.C.E., correlating City IV to the Conquest. His interpretation triggered debate but was rooted in a broad synthesis of architectural, ceramic, and small-find evidence.

Kenyon, while documenting the same catastrophic burn and the remarkable brick-ramp debris, argued for an end-MB destruction and a gap in LB occupation. Her conclusion, widespread in mid-century scholarship, is precisely what Wood reassessed by bringing the entire evidentiary ensemble back into view.

The Italian-Palestinian expedition validated the burn and the brick signatures in modern exposures and detected LB II layers in portions of the tell, confirming continued or renewed LB activity under later disturbance—a direct challenge to the notion of total LB absence.

The City’s Defensive Geometry and the “Ramp” That Should Not Exist

Jericho’s fortification system included a lower stone revetment wall, a mudbrick parapet above it, and an upper city wall encircling the acropolis. The upper town spanned roughly six acres; with the defensive system, the core extended to about nine acres. Conservative demographic density for the upper city alone would be around six hundred residents, with thousands more sheltering on the embankment and from nearby villages during crisis.

This architecture was designed to make attackers climb a deadly slope. Yet the debris field at the foot of the revetment transformed that slope into an access ramp—exactly the scenario the Hebrew idiom “fell beneath itself” evokes and exactly what the profiles and photographs display.

The Ban, the Grain, and the Seven-Day Siege

Archaeology expects empty bins after long sieges. Jericho yields full jars. Both Garstang and Kenyon recovered large quantities of grain, scorched in situ—evidence of a rapid capture in harvest season and of strict obedience to Joshua’s prohibition against taking devoted goods. That is what the ground preserves; it is what Joshua commanded under Jehovah’s ḥērem.

The Late Bronze Question Reopened by Modern Work

Where Kenyon’s reading emphasized LB absence, later fieldwork and reassessment demonstrate LB activity at the site. The Italian-Palestinian expedition reports LB II layers despite later leveling, and Wood shows that Jericho’s pottery has legitimate LB parallels when read within regional variability and context. Together, these lines reopen the window in which Joshua’s Jericho must stand.

Wood’s Use of Multiple Controls: Pottery, Radiocarbon, and Egyptian Synchronisms

Wood’s dating centers on the Late Bronze ceramic suite in the destruction layer, interpreted with an eye to regional comparanda and Egyptian chronological anchors. He engages radiocarbon critically and as part of a broader evidentiary matrix, not as a stand-alone trump. The result is a late fifteenth-century destruction that coheres with the biblical date.

Multiple syntheses of the burn, the collapse, the grain, and the ceramic profile have been presented in accessible form; even popular reporting captured the essentials: a three-foot burn band with collapsed wall material, charred timbers, and pottery dating near 1410 B.C.E., aligning closely with 1406 B.C.E. for the fall.

Why Dr. Bryant G. Wood Is Correct

First, he takes the whole record seriously. Where mid-century scholarship allowed a negative argument from absence to eclipse positive, repeated field observations, Wood restores convergence as the standard: the destruction burn, the debris-ramp of fallen brick, and the ban-behavior grain—in short, the very material fingerprints Joshua’s account demands.

Second, he corrects the ceramic lens. Jericho’s Late Bronze repertoire, reassessed in light of regional comparanda and local production, is consistent with a ca. 1400 B.C.E. destruction. Kenyon’s LB “absence” is not the last word; Italian-Palestinian exposures have detected LB II layers, and Wood demonstrates that the pottery and small finds fit within a LB frame when context is honored.

Third, he honors context in radiocarbon discussion. Radiocarbon is a tool, not an oracle; it must be weighed with secure provenience and stratigraphic clarity. Wood integrates C-14 indications without allowing them to override the on-the-ground, site-specific data that speak plainly of a rapid conquest during harvest and a city devoted to Jehovah.

Fourth, he reads the architecture as archaeology demands. Kenyon’s own west-trench profile shows what Joshua’s Hebrew idiom foretells: a wall whose bricks fell down the slope and “beneath itself,” building a ramp by their own collapse—God’s providential assault course. Italian-Palestinian work corroborates the same brick banking in renewed trenches.

Fifth, he aligns with the only chronology that respects the inerrant text. The biblical date for Jericho’s fall is anchored to 1406 B.C.E. within an Exodus of 1446 B.C.E. Wood’s archaeological date coheres with this framework and with Garstang’s earlier correlation—now strengthened by better control of the data and by modern exposures that reveal LB traces.

In sum, Wood is correct because he submits method to reality and reality to Scripture’s truth. The burn is there. The bricks are there. The grain is there. The Late Bronze indicators are there. And the date that unites them is the very date demanded by the Word of God.

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