How Chicken Bones Helped Archaeologists Date an Ancient Battle between Jews and Greeks

During the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BCE), the Jews liberated the Land of Israel from the rule of the Seleucid Greek empire, based in Syria. The revolt's leaders, the Hasmonean family, thereafter established a new royal dynasty that governed Judea for over century. But in the decades after the revolt sporadic fighting with the Seleucids continued, including a battle in which the Hasmoneans destroyed a Greek settlement known as Tel Iztabba (or Ictaba). Judy Siegel-Itzkovich describes new discoveries at the site: