Khirbet Qeiyafa slideshow by Garfinkel and Ganor
Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor have posted the slideshow from their 2008 ASOR presentation on Khirbet Qeiyafa (HT: G.M. Grena on the Biblicalist). I recommend it for its content, not for its aesthetic qualities (props for the site photos and drawings; slops for the black-on-red caption boxes). Like everyone else, I eagerly await more news about the writing on the ostracon, now that photographs have been taken and presumably handed over to Haggai Misgav et al. The identification of the site as Sha‘arayim seems quite likely now, completely independent of anything learned from the ostracon. (Or maybe not; see Todd Bolen’s take on the issue.) The site’s occupation in the first half of the ninth century also seems quite likely. Reports of the “low chronology’s” death may be greatly exaggerated, or premature, but Khirbet Qeiyafa must surely influence our picture of 10th-century Judah. Let us not overstate the case: what we (the interested public) know of Khirbet Qeiyafa at this point hardly “proves that David killed Goliath” or anything of that sort. However, Khirbet Qeiyafa does counterbalance the increasingly common portrayal of 10th-century Judah as a cultural backwater. Our (the interested public’s) ability to assess the significance of the site for historical reconstruction and the “minimalist-maximalist” debate will surely increase as the excavation team presents and publishes their finds in the coming months.
2 comments Christopher Heard | Bible (specific texts), Israelite and Judean history, archaeology, biblical world

[...] ASOR has been posted as a 6.23 meg pdf file. Plenty of graphics for those interested. Hat tip to Chris Heard at Higgaion Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)New Video [...]
But you have to admit, the graveyard slide was a nice touch.
For the rest, to judge from corridor talk in places like NELC at Harvard, I think it is fair to say that a consensus is developing among archaeologists that the details currently available are decisive enough to throw into question rather seriously a number of tenets of minimalism as we know it.