Beyond Kings and Wars: Avraham Faust's 2026 Archaeology of the Elderly Opens a New Window on Everyday Life in Iron Age Israel

Archaeology Turns to a Neglected Population: The Elderly

Archaeology has transformed understanding of ancient society by moving beyond kings, battles and monumental architecture toward the lives of ordinary people. Women, children, rural communities, household organization and social inequality have increasingly entered archaeological research. One demographic group, however, has remained surprisingly difficult to reconstruct: the elderly.

In a new 2026 peer-reviewed study published by Cambridge University Press in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Prof. Dr. Avraham Faust of Bar-Ilan University asks what archaeology can tell us about elderly people and social elders in Iron Age Israel.

His case study focuses on Building 101 at Tel ʿEton, one of the most detailed domestic archaeological contexts available for exploring household organization in ancient Israel.

From Human Remains to Social Status

Faust's study makes an important methodological distinction. Old age is not simply biological or chronological. In ancient societies, being regarded as an "elder" could also represent social position, authority, household status and communal responsibility. By combining archaeology with ancient textual evidence and ethnographic comparison, the study asks how elderly men and women may be identified not merely as bodies of a certain age, but as active members of a household and society. This approach contributes to a broader transformation in biblical archaeology: the attempt to reconstruct the lived social world behind ancient texts rather than focusing exclusively on rulers, fortifications and political events.

Tel ʿEton and the Social World of Iron Age Israel

Tel ʿEton has played an important role in Faust's archaeological research. His work there has contributed to debates over settlement patterns, household archaeology, social organization, state formation and the development of Iron Age Judah. The 2026 article adds another layer: it asks how age and authority may have been physically expressed within the domestic environment. The result is a picture of archaeology not simply as the study of objects, but as a discipline capable of reconstructing relationships between parents, children, generations, authority and household space.

A Second Major Public Appearance in September 2026

Faust also appeared in a major public scholarly discussion released on 14 September 2026 by the New Books Network. Together with biblical scholar Zev I. Farber, he discussed their book The Bible's First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon. The interview examines Saul, David and Solomon, the historical questions surrounding the United Monarchy, and the relationship between biblical narratives and archaeological evidence. The interview was hosted by Željko Stanojević.

It is important to note that Cambridge University Press published the book in 2025, while the New Books Network interview was released in September 2026.

From Iron Age Households to the Return to Zion

At the European Hebrew Journal International Scholarly Online Zoom Conference 2026, Faust will move from Iron Age social archaeology to another major historical transition. His lecture "The Archaeology of the Return to Zion and the Achaemenid Economic Revolution" examines the archaeological evidence for Persian-period settlement and the historical question of the Return to Zion within the broader transformation of the Achaemenid world.

Faust's work on the archaeology of ancient Israel and the Persian period represents one of the most sustained and productive research programs in contemporary biblical archaeology.