Two Capitals in the Iron Age and Persian Period

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Jerusalem University College, 3 Aravnah HaYevosi, Mt. Zion, Jerusalem

8:45 – Reception

9:00-10:15 –  Session 1. Session Chair Steve Ortiz

Zion, The City of David and the Ophel in Biblical Memory and in Historical Reality

Yigal Levin

The Samaria Necropolis: Tombs, Pottery, and Social Status

Haya Katz, Uzi Greenfield, Anastasia Shapiro, Benny Har-Even, and Annette Landes-Nagar 

Separating and Uniting Jerusalem: Understanding Jerusalem Urban Landscape in Light of New Discoveries

Yuval Gadot, Yiftach Shalev, and Efrat Bocher

10:15-10:30  – Coffee Break

10:30-11:45 –  Session 2. Session Chair Felix Hagemeyer

New Perspective on the Pool of Siloam: From the Iron Age Water Reservoir to Ritual Center in the Second Temple Period

David Gurevich and Asher Grossberg

Servants of the King: The Emergence of Jerusalem’s Middle Class and the Socioeconomic and Political Landscape of the City through the Lens of the Wood Economy

Yael Hochma

?The Second most important cities after Jerusalem and Samaria: What, When and Why

Hoo-Goo Kang

12:00  –  Lunch

12:30  –  Leave for tour of Givati Parking Lot Excavations

Yiftach Shalev

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Ariel University (Building 58, Floor 2, Room 10)

9:00 – Reception

9:30-10:45 – Session 3. Session Chair Hoo-Goo Kang

                                A Tale of Two Cities: Samaria and Jerusalem in the Persian Period

                                Felix Hagemeyer

Dismantled by Empire: The Archaeology of the Kingdom of Israel from the Late 8th to Late 7th Century BCE

Alexandra Wrathall

                                From Foundation to Fall: Samaria, Capital of Israel’s Northern Kingdom

                                Norma Franklin

10:45-11:00  –  Coffee Break

11:00-12:15 – Session 4. Session Chair Shawn Zelig Aster

                                Samariah and Cuneiform in Canaan

                                Wayne Horowitz

Script-Switching and Social Identity: The Paleo-Hebrew Scribes in Persian Period Judea and Samaria 

Harrison Fausey

The Assyrian Deportations to Samaria: The Peoples’ and their Deities’ Identities

K. Lawson Younger, Jr.

12:15-13:15 – Lunch

13:15-14:30 – Session 5. Session Chair Itzick Shai

When Did Jews Begin to Identity as ‘Israel’? The Hasmonean Period (Again!) as a Watershed

Yonatan Adler

Winged Wardens from Cherubim to Nike

Chris McKinny 

Judah’s Expansionist Dynamics in Late Iron Age Samaria: The Case of Mras ed-Din in the Late 7th Century BCE

Shay Bar and Harel Shochat 

14:30-14:45 – Coffee Break

14:45-16:00 – Session 6. Session Chair K. Lawson Younger, Jr.

Alternating or Synchronous: The Relationship Between the Rise and Fall of Samaria and Jerusalem

Joe Uziel

Jerusalem and Samaria: Cultural Contacts and Trade According to the Pottery Assemblage

David Ben-Shlomo

Samaria and Megiddo in the Late Iron Age: Two Neo-Assyrian Provincial Capitals

Assaf Kleiman

The Bench Tombs during the Iron Age II – between Jerusalem and Samaria

Aharon Tavger

Kinship, Regional Elites, and Decentralized Governance: The Northern Kingdom of Israel – between Samaria and Jerusalem

Aren M. Maeir and Itzick Shai

Thursday, January 15, 2026

Field Tour to (Sabastia, Mt. Ebal, Kh Jama’in)

Bus to leave Jerusalem 7:00 via Ariel 8:30 – Sebastia, Mt. Ebal, Kh Jama’in, Ariel University, Jerusalem