Erez Ben-Yosef

Erez Ben-Yosef is an Israeli archaeologist at Tel Aviv University and director of the Central Timna Valley Project, which has excavated and surveyed the copper-mining and -smelting sites of the southern Arabah Valley since 2009.

Ben-Yosef's work has produced one of the most significant chronological revisions in recent Levantine archaeology. Radiocarbon dates from the smelting camps at Timna and Khirbet en-Nahas place peak industrial-scale copper production in the late 11th to early 9th centuries BC — overlapping the period of David and Solomon. This evidence has supported the historicity of an early Edomite kingdom (Genesis 36, 2 Samuel 8:13-14) and provided a plausible archaeological context for the scriptural references to Solomon's bronze and copper supply (1 Kings 7:45-46). The dating directly challenges minimalist views that had pushed organized Edomite statehood centuries later.

A second methodological contribution — the "tent-dweller" critique — argues that the standard archaeological criteria for state formation (monumental architecture, fortifications, urban density) systematically underweight societies whose elites lived in non-permanent dwellings. Ben-Yosef applies this to Edom: large-scale, well-organized industrial copper production existed alongside a population that left almost no architectural footprint. The implication is that absence of monumental architecture in a region is not evidence of absence of polity, which has direct bearing on debates about the early Israelite monarchy.

His publications include extensive technical reports on Timna and Khirbet en-Nahas, alongside synthesis articles in journals such as the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research and PNAS. The Timna site itself sits within Timna Park in southern Israel, with Egyptian-era shrine remains (the Hathor temple, originally documented by Beno Rothenberg) attesting to New Kingdom Egyptian mining activity in the same valley.