Fig 1.
Wilson’s Arch excavation area.
(A) Map of the old city of Jerusalem and the location Wilson’s Arch. Copyrights: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2020. (B) An artistic reconstruction of the Temple Mount in the time of Herod the Great (1st century AD). The arrow points to the arch known today as Wilson's Arch. Copyrights: Ritmeyer Archaeological Design, 2020. (C,D) Photographs of the site. The scale bar in D is 1 meter in length. (E,F) A 3D reconstruction of the site. As the site is under constant renovations, a model is used here to illustrate the location of the various features and strata. A section drawing of strata 1,4,5 was imposed on the Western Wall to illustrate their relative position.
Fig 2.
Sediments FTIR spectra and “Grinding curves” plot.
Top: FTIR spectra of the materials correlating to Table 1. Bottom: “Grinding curves” plot (after Regev et al. [11], with modifications), illustrating the differences in the local atomic order of the calcitic fraction of the spectra above (circles), compared to standard geogenic and pyrogenic calcite minerals (linear lines). The vicinity of the samples to specific lines point to the probable origin of the calcite fraction in the sample. The FWHM values of chalk and ash samples are noted below and above their trend lines, respectively.
Fig 3.
Multiplot of the stratigraphy-based radiocarbon model of Wilson’s arch.
The areas plotted in black depict the modeled posterior age of the sample, while the light gray areas depict the entire calibrated range of the measurement.
Table 1.
Radiocarbon dating results after Bayesian modeling of the different strata.
The modeled age ranges are presented in Fig 3. See the explanation above for how the most probable age ranges of the layers were determined.
Fig 4.
Summarizing chronological chart of Wilson’s arch excavation.
Comparing the rulers and major events in the history of Jerusalem to the radiocarbon dating of the strata. The grey vertical rectangles mark the length of the historical events. The histograms represent the total probability distributions of the radiocarbon measurements of each stratum (using the 'Sum' function in OxCal).