ABSTRACT
In recent years, Amihai Mazar has suggested making Tel Rehov a principal anchor in the debate on the dating of the Iron Age strata in the Levant (Bruins, van der Plicht and Mazar 2003a; Coldstream and Mazar 2003; Mazar 1999a: 40-42; 2004; Mazar and Carmi 2001). In my opinion this cannot be the case. In what follows I wish to deal with the new data provided by Tel Rehov and elaborate on the role of Megiddo in this discussion. Two facts call for a close look at Tel Rehov and its stratigraphy: (1) An inter-laboratory test shows that the Weizmann and Groningen laboratories produce similar results (Sharon et al. [Chapter 6, this volume]); (2) The second Tel Rehov series (Bruins, van der Plicht and Mazar 2003a) clearly diverts from the radiocarbon results provided by many other Iron I and early Iron II sites (Sharon et al. [Chapter 6, this volume]). Needless to say, what follows does not diminish in any way my respect for the importance of the site and the scholarship of its excavator Amihai Mazar. The Second Series of 14C Measurements from Tel Reh ov
Eliezer Piasetzky and I have shown that measured against the two main theories on the dating of the Megiddo VIA and the Megiddo VA-IVB horizons, previously published 14C measurements from Tel Rehov (Mazar and Carmi 2001) fit better the Low Chronology system (Finkelstein and Piasetzky 2003a). A second set of 14C readings from Tel Rehov has been described by Bruins, van der Plicht and Mazar (2003a) as supporting the conventional (High) chronology. In what follows I wish briefly to summarize and update the main points raised by Piasetzky and I against this notion (Finkelstein and Piasetzky 2003b, 2003c).
