Jericho Pottery
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Jericho Discoveries Confirm the Biblical Conquest and Divine Judgment
At The Flood Museum, we stand in awe of how the physical evidence of history—much like the worldwide layers left by Noah’s Flood—affirms the reliability of Scripture. One of the clearest examples is the ancient city of Jericho (Tell es-Sultan), where pottery discoveries in the destruction layer provide compelling confirmation of the Biblical account in Joshua chapter 6. Far from disproving the Bible, as some once claimed, the ceramics, burned grain stores, and collapsed walls align precisely with God’s miraculous judgment on this strongly fortified Canaanite stronghold around 1400 B.C.
The Biblical Record: A City Conquered in a Single Week
The Book of Joshua describes Jericho as a walled city tightly shut up because of the Israelites (Joshua 6:1). After seven days of marching and the sounding of the trumpets, “the wall fell down flat” (Joshua 6:20), allowing the people to charge straight ahead into the city. The entire settlement was then burned with fire (Joshua 6:24), yet the grain stores remained untouched—a detail consistent with the command to devote everything to the Lord (Joshua 6:17–19). The timing aligns with spring harvest (Joshua 2:6; 3:15; 5:10), indicating a short siege rather than a prolonged campaign.
Early Excavations and the First Pottery Evidence
British archaeologist John Garstang conducted extensive digs at Jericho from 1930 to 1936. In the destruction debris he uncovered a thick layer of ash, collapsed mudbrick walls that had fallen outward over a massive stone retaining wall (creating a natural ramp), and dozens of storage jars still filled with charred grain—evidence of a sudden, complete conflagration at harvest time. Most significantly, Garstang found distinctive painted pottery in the destruction layer and cemetery, including imported Cypriot bichrome ware (red-and-black geometric designs) and local Canaanite forms. He dated the city’s violent end to approximately 1400 B.C., exactly matching the Biblical chronology derived from 1 Kings 6:1 (480 years before Solomon’s temple).
Kathleen Kenyon’s Interpretation and the Role of Pottery
From 1952 to 1958, Dame Kathleen Kenyon, a highly respected British archaeologist, re-excavated the site with more modern stratigraphic methods. She too found the dramatic destruction layer: walls collapsed outward, rooms filled with fallen bricks and burned debris, and the same unplundered grain stores. Yet Kenyon dated the destruction to the end of the Middle Bronze Age, around 1550 B.C.—150 years too early for Joshua. Her reasoning centered almost entirely on pottery, or rather the absence of it.
Kenyon argued that true Late Bronze I occupation (ca. 1550–1400 B.C.) should contain imported Cypriot bichrome pottery, a diagnostic marker widely found at other Canaanite sites. Since she did not recover these luxury imports in her limited excavation squares, she concluded Jericho was abandoned after 1550 B.C. and uninhabited during the time of the conquest. In her popular book Digging Up Jericho, she explicitly stated that “the chronology based on the Biblical record cannot be taken literally.”
The Anti-Biblical Bias Exposed
Kenyon’s conclusions were eagerly embraced by much of the mid-20th-century archaeological community, which often operated under the influence of higher criticism and a skeptical worldview that viewed the conquest narrative as legendary or greatly exaggerated. Many scholars presupposed that the Bible could not be taken at face value in matters of history or chronology. Kenyon’s reliance on negative evidence (what was not found) rather than a comprehensive study of the abundant local pottery fit neatly into this paradigm. Her view became the scholarly consensus for decades, leading textbooks and museum displays to declare that archaeology had “disproved” the Book of Joshua.
Modern Scholarship Corrects the Record: Bryant Wood and the Local Pottery
In the 1980s and 1990s, American archaeologist and pottery specialist Dr. Bryant G. Wood conducted a meticulous re-examination of all published material from both Garstang and Kenyon. His groundbreaking 1990 article in Biblical Archaeology Review demonstrated that Kenyon had actually recovered—and illustrated in her own final reports—numerous examples of indigenous Late Bronze I pottery in the destruction layer, but she had failed to analyze or emphasize them.
Key diagnostic forms include:
Everted-rim cooking pots with flanged or internal lips (found only in Late Bronze I contexts);
Flaring carinated bowls with a slight crimp;
Conical bowls with painted concentric circles inside;
Store jars with simple folded rims;
Water jars with painted stripes;
Small dipper juglets;
Chocolate-on-White ware and additional Cypriot bichrome fragments (recovered by Garstang in erosional deposits).
These types have precise parallels at securely dated Late Bronze I sites such as Lachish Fosse Temple I, Hazor, Megiddo, Shechem, and Ashdod—none of which appear after approximately 1400 B.C. Wood further noted that Jericho was a small (6-acre), isolated site far from major trade routes. Expecting expensive imported Cypriot ware in a poor residential quarter was unrealistic; domestic local pottery provides the proper chronological marker.
Supporting evidence includes a continuous series of Egyptian scarabs from the cemetery ending with Amenhotep III (reigned ca. 1386–1349 B.C.), stratigraphic phases impossible to compress into Kenyon’s short chronology, and radiocarbon dates compatible with 1400 B.C.
Confirmation of the Biblical Destruction
The pottery thus firmly dates Jericho’s fall to the early 14th century B.C.—precisely when Scripture places it. Combined with the outward-collapsed walls (forming a ramp exactly as described in Joshua 6:20), the site-wide burn layer, and the untouched grain jars (evidence of a seven-day siege at harvest time with no looting), the archaeological picture matches the Biblical record in every verifiable detail.
Recent Italian-Palestinian excavations led by Lorenzo Nigro have further documented Late Bronze occupation and destruction evidence, reinforcing the revised chronology.
A Call to Trust God’s Word
The pottery shards preserved in Jericho’s ashes stand today as silent but eloquent witnesses. Just as the Flood left unmistakable geological and cultural markers across the earth, God left clear archaeological testimony at Jericho of His power and faithfulness to His promises. The biases of an earlier generation have been corrected by careful, unbiased analysis of the evidence itself.
Visitors to The Flood Museum are invited to see these truths for themselves: the God who judged the world by water in Noah’s day is the same God who brought down the walls of Jericho by His word. His Word is trustworthy—both in the ancient past and for our lives today.
References
Wood, Bryant G. “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence.” Biblical Archaeology Review 16, no. 2 (March/April 1990): 44–58.
Kenyon, Kathleen M. Digging Up Jericho. London: Ernest Benn, 1957.
Kenyon, Kathleen M. Excavations at Jericho. Vol. 3. London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1981.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001.
Associates for Biblical Research. “Jericho: Does the Evidence Disprove or Prove the Bible?” Accessed March 2026. https://biblearchaeology.org/research/conquest-of-canaan/3865-jericho-does-the-evidence-disprove-or-prove-the-bible.
Kennedy, Titus. “The Bronze Age Destruction of Jericho, Archaeology, and the Book of Joshua.” Religions 14, no. 6 (2023): 796. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060796.
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