Deus Artefacta: Another Ad hominem response to the Tall e-Hammam Scientific Report

Human remains in Middle Bronze layer
of Tall el-Hammam excavation 2011.
(C) Michael C. Luddeni

Recently I was contacted by a Professor who had posted an ad hominem blog post trying to cast doubt on the Scientific Report published on the research in and around our site and about the details of the controversial photo of the human remains in the scientific report as it has been claimed that it was altered. Initially he did not reveal his connection with his website that stated who is "Exploring Science, Explaining Evolution, and Exposing Creationism." He claims that we are Biblically biases while he fails to see his bias in his own blog heading.

It has been connected with the Bible and Sodom (which is always controversial) but have also seen the ad hominem arguments leveled at the authors and especially around the changes made in 5 of the 53 photographs to place labels in some of them, one of which is presented here.

I was present at Tall el-Hammam when the photo in question which I posted on my blog (see above) was taken by our dig photographer Michael C. Luddeni and worked on by Heather. I have known and worked with Michael for many years and on several sites (Shiloh, and Khirbet el-Maqatir, Israel and Tall el-Hammam, Jordan for 15 seasons). He is a well known, highly traveled and experience archaeology photographer for over 35 years. I posted the photo of the human remains on my blog and published it with his and TeH permission in two of my books (see below).

As far as where the photo was taken, it was in the Lower Tall and in the Middle Bronze strata of Tall el-Hammam being excavated in January 2011 (Season 6 Square LA.28K1 north balk). See Steven Collins et al., “Tall El-Hammam Season Seven, 2012: Excavation, Survey, Interpretations And Insights,” Biblical Research Bulletin 12, no. 1 (2012): 13.

In an interview in 2011 with Brian Nixon of ASSIST News Service, Collins reported that:

Shortly after, we discovered a child body one meter north [from the previous skeleton]. The child’s skeleton showed the same destruction, demonstrating traumatic demise.” How so? I was quite curious. “The legs were flexed in the wrong way, the knee joints were ripped apart, one arm was broken with left palm up, and the other arm was smashed under the pelvis. In all, it showed the signs of a sudden, ghastly death.” Any other skeletal remains? I prodded. “Yes. We’re still investigating these. But, skeletal remains were found throughout the area, following the same patterns. One skeleton seems to be crouching, as if in fear, protecting itself from the destruction.^[1]

The photo in question was previously published in

Biblical Archaeology second edition (2018) p. 141

The Location of Sodom (2021) Fig. 45. p. 145

https://smyrnaean.blogspot.com/2014/03/books-by-david-e-graves.html

Collins and Scott pointed out that:

All the archaeologist on site agreed that the skeletal remains were intrinsic to the ash layer, which dates to the Middle Bronze 2 according to the ceramics. The material is within a half meter of the surface, at the level of the Middle Bronze 2 houses, streets, and alleyways. The human remains are mixed in with fallen mudbricks, pottery, other artifacts, and lots of ash. . . . ^.Some of their joints are hyperextended or twisted apart unnaturally, not in any normal or burial position. One is charred off at mid-femur. Their condition at death attests to “extreme trauma.” This is terminology from our osteologists as they observed and documented the condition of the bones in situ.^[2]

^[1] Collins and Scott, Discovering the City of Sodom, 178–79.

^[2] Brian Nixon, “Archaeological Evidence for Sodom: Recent Findings Shed Light on Discoveries of ‘Biblical Proportions,’” ASSIST News Service, December 8, 2011, 3–4. Published in the Location of Sodom.

From what is obvious from my published photo of the skeleton it is evident that it is the same photo they have cleaned up and added arrows. The Photo used in the Scientific Report had arrows added in the bottom right corner and smoothed the rock to accommodate the arrow but does not change any of the research in the report. In the publishing industry photos are cleaned up for publication all the time. I can certainly testify to the detailed and accurate documentation we take on site as square supervisors to ensure its properly scientifically recorded in accordance with all archaeological sites in the Middle East (and every site begins with an hypothesis of what they believe the site is and allow the data to prove or disprove their hypothesis). From season 1 we could tell from the cut in the city wall done by modern military equipment in order to put in a road during the '67 war with Israel that we had Middle Bronze destruction and then no Later bronze level and then Iron age built on top of it. This was confirmed in the subsequent years in each of the squares. Thus, we could make early calls to what we could find and not because we were trying to prove the Bible. It just happened to line up with the description of the biblical text.