The idea for this book germinated when one of us (TL) was on sabbatical in 2003 at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies located in the magnificent Jacobean manor house in the Oxfordshire village of Yarnton. During that period, we had the good fortune of meeting during TLs visit to the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU). Together, we spearheaded a radiocarbon dating project of samples from the Iron Age site of Khirbat en-Nahas in southern Jordan. As work progressed, emails began to fly between ORAU, Yarnton, and many of the key players in Israel, Jordan, and around the world who have been trying to date Iron Age sites that are linked to problems associated with Biblical history. By the end of the sabbatical, we decided to mount an international conference or workshop at Yarnton Manor that would bring together many of the leading archaeologists, Biblical historians, Egyptologists, and radiocarbon dating specialists working on these problems. To tackle the chronological issues linked with working in the ‘Biblical’ periods, especially the Iron Age (ca. 1200–586 BCE), we felt it imperative to take an interdisciplinary perspective on the problem.

We are especially fortunate to have had laboratory representatives from the four main institutions who have carried out radiocarbon analyses of Iron Age materials from Israel and Jordan attending the meeting. These included the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (University of Oxford), Centre for Isotope Research (University of Groningen), NSF Arizona AMS Facility (University of Arizona), and the Radiocarbon Laboratory (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot).