Archaeology and the Bar Kokhba Rebellion

Tuesday's lecture at Beit Shmuel on the contribution of archaeology to to research into the Bar Kokhba rebellion, reminded me both of the contribution of coins to our knowledge of the past and of the difficulty of interpreting the meaning of the presence of any artifact in a particular place.

For dates after the invention of coins, they can be better than pottery for dating a location. That coin showing Hadrian's likeness didn't get there before Hadrian became emperor.

But coins are easier than pottery to carry from place to place. The presence of a Bar Kokhba coin in Hungary does not make anyone think that the rebellion spread that far. I suppose you could write an article about the likelihood of a Roman soldier carrying the coin there versus the possibility that a string of itinerant traders brought it there. Or even that a refugee carried it as a reminder of the hope that faded in so few years.

This makes it difficult to interpret the four Bar Kikhba coins found in the north of Israel as a sign that the rebellion spread that far.

Here in Jerusalem, even in a popular lecture on archaeology you hear of very new findings. Tuesday we heard about a village in the north that showed the same signs of destruction at about the same date as the places the Romans definitely destroyed farther south as they put down the rebellion.

Copyright 2012 Jane S. Fox