Archeologists are constantly digging up artifacts which interact with our historical narratives. These objects, by themselves, give us little information, and can, in fact, mislead us toward false conclusions about events and people. Taken in the context of text, they can, however, deepen our knowledge of what has happened and who did it.
("Archaeology" can be spelled with or without the second "a"!)
A recent example: in that highly disputed bit of land called "Israel", "Palastine", "Judea", or "the Levant", a team of archaeologists has recently discovered the earliest verified Christian church in Israel. It dates to the early 200's, and is located in the Valley of Armageddon, north of Jerusalem. Mosaics and inscriptions identified the site.
Questions quickly come to mind - why would oldest remaining Christian church in Palastine date from the early 200's, when we know that large numbers of Christians were there as early as 35 A.D.? Why are the Christian churches in other parts of the world so much older?
Texts give us the answer: during the first decades of Christianity, the followers of Jesus met in synagogues and in the Jersusalem Temple, because they were still viewed, at that time, as Jews. Yes, the early Christians were simply one type of Jew. There were several different varieties of Judaism at that time, and Christianity seemed, at first, simply like one more version of the Jewish faith. So there were no separate buildings designated as Christian churches.
When the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, and Christians and Jews were scattered across the Roman Empire, shortly before 100 A.D., the construction of Christian churches, as distinct from Jewish worship structures begins in larger numbers. So why do we find that oldest Christian church in Palastine is from around 200 A.D.? Why not one hundred years earlier?
In fact, there were many churches built a hundred years earlier in the Roman province of Judea. However, they were destroyed, and are not there for today's archaeologists to find.
Unlike the early churches in Greece and other areas of the Roman Empire, the churches in the Levant were the targeted for destruction. In the late 600's, Islamic armies swept through the area, destroying both Jewish and Christian worship structures.
That's why today's archeologists don't find old churches in that part of the world.
