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“IN CONVERSATION WITH ODED LIPSCHITS” 43Within this broad framework there is plenty of room for differentand contrasting ideas. 32 However, any attempt to drag this “middleway” reconstruction of the situation in Judah in the direction of a total“empty land” interpretation, 33 or in the direction of an argument fortotal continuity followed by the later creation of the “myth of the emptyland,” 34 derives, I think, from historical preconceptions about thisperiod.This may also be the principle reason why the material culture ofthis period was not identified until now in archaeological research. Theshort period of time that elapsed between the Babylonian destructionand the return is not a sufficient reason for the absence of finds, andmay represent an example of “structural habits of thought” inarchaeological research. Historical conclusions inform the chronologicaldivisions usually drawn in historical and archaeological research. In thecase of the Babylonian destruction, it can work only if one accepts thereconstruction of a total devastation of the land and a populationvacuum created because of it. Scholarly inability to assign materialculture to the 6 th century BCE, therefore, is a combination of twoelements:1. The fact that many of the archaeologists were neverlooking for material remains from this period. Thehistorical assumption of an empty land during the 6 thcentury BCE is a starting point for many archaeologicalstudies, and since nearly no one was looking for remainsfrom this period, nothing was found.2. If indeed people continued to live in Benjamin and in otherplaces in Judah after 586, we should expect the samematerial culture as before (pottery production, burialcustoms, building techniques etc.).The impact of historical preconceptions on archaeological researchcaused most archaeologists to assign all the finds familiar to them asbelonging to the late Iron Age to the period before 586 BCE. It iscorrect in the case of Jerusalem, Lachish and other places destroyed byHellenistic Palestine: Between Tradition and Renewal (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute,2006).32 Cf., for example, the opposing opinions expressed by Vanderhooft onthe one side and Middlemas on the other: D.S. Vanderhooft, The Neo-BabylonianEmpire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets (HSM 59; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999);J. Middlemas, The Troubles of Templeless Judah (Oxford Theological Monographs;Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).33 See E. Stern's basic view in his Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in thePersian Period 538-332 B.C. (Warminster: Aris and Phillips / Jerusalem: IsraelExploration Society, 1982). See also Stern's 'The Babylonian Gap', BAR 26/6(2000), 45-51, 76, and also in his Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, vol. II: TheAssyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods 732-332 BCE (ABRL; New York:Doubleday, 2001), 303-50.34 See R. Carroll’s paper, “The Myth of the Empty Land,” Semeia 59 [1992]79-93, and H. Barstad's book, The Myth of the Empty Land: A Study in the Historyand Archaeology of Judah During the “Exilic” Period (Symbolae Osloenses, Fasc.Suppl. 28; Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1998).