The widespread skeptical approaches toward the ability of archaeology to identify ethnic groups in the archaeological record of ancient Israel are unwarranted. It is based on the failure of the culture-history approach to identify archaeological cultures which correspond with the groups mentioned in the Bible on the one hand, and on outdated views on the nature of the archaeology of ethnicity on the other.

The existing gap between the archaeology of ancient Israel and anthropological archaeology is damaging, and is partially responsible for the dead-end we are facing when studying ethnicity in ancient Israel. Indeed, a number of more anthropological or anthropologically oriented studies conducted recently (Levy and Holl 2002; Dever 2003; Bloch-Smith 2003; Miller 2004; Killebrew 2005; Faust 2006) identify ancient Israel archaeologically, and will, in my opinion, change what seems currently like a ‘skeptic’ discourse.

While better-informed studies of ethnicity will overcome what appears like a dead-end, it should be stressed that this is not sufficient. Biblical Archaeology should not only open up to more‘theoretical’ or ‘anthropological’ studies of ethnicity, but widen its research agenda, in order to embrace the study of society in all its aspects. One cannot study ethnicity in isolation, even if it is a ‘hot’ and ‘sexy’ issue, as it is but one, very complex aspect of society.

A detailed study of the societies involved will enable us to learn about family structure, community organization, wealth, economic structures, gender relations, etc., which in turn will allow us to identify ethnic behaviors, and even ethnic symbols. Only detailed knowledge will allow us insights into the society’s cognitive world, including its identity.

The relations between Biblical Archaeology and anthropological archaeology, however, need not be one-sided, i.e., the former borrowing from the latter. Due to our extremely large database, the archaeology of ancient Israel has much to contribute to general anthropology. Due to the hundreds of planned excavations, thousands of salvage excavations, and extensive surveys, we currently posses enough data against which the conclusions of various studies can be examined and checked. In this respect, Israel is an archaeological laboratory, which was practically not used by general archaeology. The availability of many texts, as problematic as they are, is also a great advantage for the study of ethnic markers and behaviors. Texts are, after all, cultural documents of the society that produces them, regardless of their historicity (Murray 1998: xxxi; King and Stager 2001: 7). This is, therefore, another potential strength of our sub-discipline (see also Bunimovitz and Faust, this volume), and it supplements the advantages of our vast material database even further.

And this is the great promise that lies in Biblical Archaeology: Not only would a better interaction between Biblical Archaeology and anthropological archaeology help and greatly improve Biblical Archaeology in general and the study of ethnicity in ancient Israel in particular, but Biblical Archaeology has a great potential to contribute to anthropology. We should use this potential.