of City IV to the Middle Bronze Age. Wood's attempt to equate the destruction of City IV with the Israelite conquest of Jericho must therefore be rejected. Wood responded that he had produced evidence to back his argument, and that any counter-claims should also be backed by fresh evidence. In 1995 new evidence became available in the form of charred cereal grains from the City IV destruction layer. Radiocarbon dating of these grains showed that Jericho City IV was destroyed "during the late 17th or the 16th century BC", in line with Kenyon's findings, and that "the fortified Bronze Age city at Tell es-Sultan [Jericho] was not destroyed by ca.1400 BC, as Wood suggested". Wood responded to the newer evidence in an article for the Bible and Spade magazine, concluding that he still held to the date ca. 1400 B.C. based on pottery finds. Wood also argues that the discrepancy is part of the ongoing dispute between Egyptologists and radiocarbon experts that centers around the date of the Thera eruption. Kenyon's date is consensually accepted by mainstream archaeologists. William G. Dever dismissed Wood's theories stating: "Of course, for some, that only made the Biblical story more miraculous than ever—Joshua destroyed a city that wasn't even there!" According to Ann E. Killebrew, "Most scholars today accept that the majority of the conquest narratives in the book of Joshua are devoid of historical reality". Khirbet el-Maqatir Wood directed excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir, a city which he and his associates contend may be the biblical city of Ai. (The traditional location of Ai, et-Tell, was excavated most recently by Joseph Callaway and was found to have been abandoned during the entirety of the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages.) Khirbet el-Maqatir has produced pottery of the Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, Late Bronze I, Iron Age I, late Hellenistic/early Roman, and Byzantine periods. Based on initial finds, including a small Late Bronze I fortress that was destroyed by fire - some two centuries earlier than the date usually considered for the events of Book of Joshua - their "preliminary conclusion is that the LB I fortress meets the Biblical requirements to be tentatively identified as the fortress Ai, referred to in Josh. 7–8." They see a nearby wadi as the hiding place of the Israelites before the ambush, and they have found that the fortress had a gate. These points fit the limited and