Archeology and Jerusalem : where was the City of David ?

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I exchanged yesterday some interesting comments with @just4him about Jerusalem. I believe that a few up-to-date data about the archeology of Jerusalem might interest some members. Being not a specialist of Israelian archeology, I will follow mainly a good one, Israel Finkelstein, Professor of the Archeology of Israel in the Bronze and Iron Ages at Tel Aviv University and also a major specialist when it comes to use archeological data to reconstruct biblical history. As it is unusually long, I will split this post in two parts. When we speak of Rome, we have a legend telling that it was founded by Romulus in 753 BC, and the archeology has determined that a first perimeter wall was built on the Palatine ca 730/720 BC, so the legend seems to be correct. When we speak of Jerusalem, we have a lot of Biblical texts but... there is a serious problem. If, like said Valerie «God determined Jerusalem as the capital during the reign of King David», the archeologists are still searching the remains of the period of David(the 10th C BC). The Professor Israel Finkelstein, in a book published in 2001, «The Bible Unearthed», sums it very well : «The most annoying after one century of researches and excavations in Jerusalem the capital of the unified monarchy of Israel so glamour, is that these ones have failed to show the proofs of any important construction during the tenth century. There is no track of magnificent palaces or states, nothing was archeologically found on the spot coming from this period. Shortly, Jerusalem during the 10th C BC was nothing else than a perched village, and not this capital exquisite and decorative of a great empire.» A major problem in Israel, is the political use of archeology to justify the colonization by Israeli settlers of Palestinian lands. As a French I will not throw them a stone, we showed them the way to go by digging a lot of Roman sites in Northern African countries during the colonial era, to prove to the natives that we were there before them and that therefore it was our land. The Bible situates the Jerusalem of king David on a mount, but curiously, the actual «city of David» excavated in Silwam is not on a mount. Again, it is our fault, at us, French. In the 1920’s a French Jew archeologist, Weill, thought that he found there «the tombs of the House of David». As they were empty and there was not an inscription, they were pertaining to whoever you want. Archeology is not an exact science, and was even less exact in the 1920’s than today, sorry. Weill did his excavations on a land that had been bought by the baron de Rothschild. The method is a bit different today. Silwam is now part of a National Park managed by Elad who has the aim to settle Jews in East-Jerusalem. Elad evicts Palestinians of their houses to do archeological excavations, and when the excavations are done they build new settlements. What has been found in the «city of David» so far ? A lot of rich archeological remains, including of the older building found in Jerusalem, from ca 3000 BC. However, when it comes to Jew archeology it looks like there is nothing before the 9th C BC, and not a building that can be objectively called a public building. Even if there are there an archeological park and many archeological projects to promote this «city of David», the true one has to be found elsewhere. To end this first part, I give a link to the website of Emek Shaveh, an NGO which is fighting for a multicultural archeology independent of religions and politics in Israel. The site hosts many interesting and objective articles about archeology in Jerusalem, including a guide to an alternative visit of Siwam/City of David.