Abstract
This book seeks to explain to the general reader or university student how archaeologists use material culture to understand the people of Early Roman-period Galilee. Although also director of the Shikhin Excavation Project in Israel, the author is primarily employed as a professor in New Testament at Samford University, and the book is written for, and within, the sub-discipline of ‘Biblical Archaeology’. Indeed, the author is the son of James Strange, one of the best-known scholars in that sub-discipline, to whom reference is made throughout.
After six, paragraph-long, testimonials by other scholars working in the same and related fields, the book begins with a foreword by Luke Timothy Johnson, Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Christian Origins at Emory University. These serve to emphasise that this is a volume aimed at an American audience interested in combining archaeology and texts to interpret the Gospels.
Most of the book consists of five thematic chapters, preceded by an introduction (pp. 1-19), and followed by a conclusion on the motivations for archaeological excavation (pp. 151-160). Overall, the style of writing and images are clear, although at times the description of archaeological concepts, such as that of Terminus Post Quem on page 67, seems a bit confused, and at others terminology departs from usual archaeological usage.
The first two chapters concern the practice of archaeological fieldwork. This is considered largely in terms of excavation, with little acknowledgment of the value of using archaeological survey as a stand-alone method of investigation, although this is an increasingly important part of contemporary archaeological fieldwork worldwide, including in the study of the eastern Roman provinces. In this, as in the excavation techniques described, one is left with the impression that many of the methodological advances of the 1960s onward have gone largely unnoticed, and key publications on archaeological method and theory from 1970 to 2023 are omitted from the bibliography.
The next two chapters address the problems of understanding ancient technologies and values as these specifically concern Early Roman-period Galilee. Consequently, unlike Chapters 1 and 2, they both avoid conveying an impression of general applicability to archaeology and focus more precisely on the period and place with which this book is concerned. This is by far the best part of the whole book and will be of use to many non-specialists and students. In fact, it might have been better to have written the book along these lines rather than including the preceding methodological chapters. However, even here, we are informed that ‘no excavation in this region records every object found’ (p. 103) – which contrasts with the usual standards of archaeological fieldwork today, where all portable artefacts would conventionally be recorded.
In sum, if your aim is to get an impression of the methods, theoretical perspectives and research themes of many American ‘Biblical Archaeologists’ working on Galilee, this is the book for you. But it differs in many respects from the theory and methodology of contemporary archaeology overall.