About Israel Finkelstein
Israel Finkelstein is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant. Finkelstein's fieldwork in northern Israel and the West Bank, as well as his development of the "Low Chronology", upended prior archaeological assessments by showing that the Kingdom of Israel was substantially larger and more prosperous when it coexisted alongside the Kingdom of Judah. Finkelstein has used these insights to challenge the biblical narrative that David and Solomon ruled a united monarchy of Israel and Judah from Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE. In 2005, he won the Dan David Prize for his study of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. He proposed that the first North Israelite territorial polity emerged in the Gibeon-Bethel plateau in the late Iron I and early Iron IIA. The expansion of Israel further to the north came during the days of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE, and even more so in the time of Jeroboam II in the first half of the 8th century BCE.
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