This is not really an issue for the Book of Mormon because of the absolute lack of evidence. However, I should note that apologists try to twist some archaeological finds to indicate support for the Book of Mormon.

When archaeological finds provide support for various historical claims in the Bible there is usually much ado. Ok...so there are some historical facts in the Bible. What has been proved? If there is ever definitive evidence for this or that person or any given settlement what is the point? Does that mean that god lives? Does it mean that any particular religion is true? Does that mean the harsh, intolerant commandments in the Bible should be followed?

In reality the only thing any archaeological find proves is that there was that particular archaeological find. Sweeping conclusions are unfounded. It is a particularly egregious academic error to draw theological conclusions from archaeology. It is no different than saying, "Because Kirtland, OH actually existed during Joseph Smith's day, the theological claims of Mormonism are true."

There is no danger of any archaeological evidence supporting Joseph Smith's fraudulent religious fiction. However, even if such evidence existed there are numerous other equally plausible explanations other than divine intervention.

"Professor Thompson ... says the inevitable conclusion is that the Israelite exile in Egypt, the Exodus and Israelite conquest of the Promised Land never took place. Excavations have found no trace of a settled population around Judea and Jerusalem during the 10th century BC, when the Kingdom of David and Solomon was supposed to have flourished. A community that could have supported a kingdom did not form in Judea until at least a century later, Professor Thompson said. Jerusalem did not become a large and politically influential city until about 650 BC. ... - AAP"

- Canberra Times, March 29, 1993.


"There is perhaps no other scriptural tradition so central to the recontruction of Israel's history that Deuteronomy presents us with than the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. It has become a prototype of salvation, a symbol of freedom and the very core of a great world religion. Yet to the historian it remains the most elusive of all the salient events of Israelite history. The event is supposed to have taken place in Egypt, yet Egyptian sources know it not. On the morrow of the Exodus Israel numbered approximately 2.5 million (extrapolated from Num. 1:46); yet the entire population of Egypt at the time was only 3 to 4.5 million! The effect on Egypt must have been cataclysmic - loss of a servile population, pillaging of gold and silver (Exod. 3:21-22, 12:31-36), destruction of an army - yet at no point in the history of the country during the New Kingdom is there the slightest hint of the traumatic impact such an event would have had on economics or society. As we have already seen, the Asiatic population in Egypt had lingered during the New Kingdom and a part of it had been assigned construction tasks (p. 221ff.); but the "store-cities" of the Exodus story (1:11) are a purely Israelite phenomenon, and the progressive assimilation of the Asiatic population during the New Kingdom is not reflected in the Exodus at all. - Donald B. Redford


"Then there is the issue of the Philistines. We hear of them in connection with Isaac's encounter with "Abimelech, king of the Philistines," at the city of Gerar (Genesis 26:1). The Philistines, a group of migrants from the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean, had not established their settlements along the coastal plain of Canaan until sometime after 1200 BCE. Their cities prospered in the eleventh and tenth centuries and continued to dominate the area well into the Assyrian period. The mention of Gerar as a Philistine city in the narratives of Isaac and the mention of the city (without the Philistine attribution) in the stories of Abraham (Genesis 20:1) suggest that it had a special importance or at least was widely known at the time of the composition of the patriarchal narratives. Gerar is today identified with Tel Haror northwest of Beersheba, and excavations there have shown that in the Iron Age I - the early phase of Philistine history - it was no more than a small, quite insignificant village. But by the late eighth and seventh century BCE, it had become a strong, heavily fortified Assyrian administrative stronghold in the south, an obvious landmark.

Were these incongruous details merely late insertions into early traditions or were they indications that both the details and the narrative were late? Many scholars - particularly those who supported the idea of the "historical" patriarchs - considered them to be incidental details. But as Thomas Thompson put it as early as the 1970s, the specific references in the text to cities, neighboring peoples, and familiar places are precisely those aspects that distinguish the patriarchal stories from completely mythical folk-tales. They are crucially important for identifying the date and message of the text. In other words, the "anachronisms" are far more important for dating and understanding the meaning and historical context of the stories of the patriarchs than the search for ancient bedouin or mathematical calculations of the patriarchs' ages and genealogies.

It becomes evident when we begin to examine the genealogies of the patriarchs and the many nations that arose from their trysts, marriages, and family relations, that they offer a colorful human map of the ancient Near East from the unmistakable viewpoint of the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. These stories offer a highly sophisticated commentary on political affairs in this region in the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods. Not only can many of the ethnic terms and place-names be dated to this time, but their characterizations mesh perfectly with what we know of the relationships of neighboring peoples and kingdoms with Judah and Israel." - Finkelstein & Silberman