Just in Time for Passover for the Exodus Celebration

Israel Finkelstein is going to be angry, again.

The archeologist who denies the Biblical account, well, mostly, is not going to like this, from his arch rival:

Have the first Israelite sites built after Exodus been found?

A Haifa University archaeologist on Monday said he has unearthed structures in the shape of human feet believed to have been erected by the Israelites upon their initial entry to the Land of Canaan.

Prof. Adam Zertal said that the large compounds discovered in the Jordan Valley were "the first sites to have been built by the Israelites upon entering Canaan and manifest the biblical notion of claiming ownership of the land by setting feet on it."

Prof. Zertal's excavation team uncovered five large foot-shaped compounds that he identifies as the biblical site of Gilgal.

and this

...Zertal has also recently claimed to have found clay markings unique to early Israelites, around the time of the conquest of Canaan described in the Bible.

According to the Book of Joshua, the Israelites arrived at Gilgal after having crossed the Jordan River. Some researchers have claimed that Gilgal is named after the collection of stones at the site that were used during various rituals, but no archaeological evidence has been discovered to support that claim.

Since 1990, five sites shaped like human feet have been excavated in the Jordan Valley. All five date back to the early Iron Age (12th to 13th centuries B.C.E.), and their shapes indicate that they were used as communal gathering places.

Zertal said that the foot-shaped sites were used during ceremonies following the Israelites' entry into the Land of Canaan. He added that the concept of the Jewish pilgrimage to Jerusalem on three major holidays (known as "aliya la'regel" or ascending on foot) also originates from the foot-shaped sites in the Jordan Valley and Mount Ebal.

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UPDATE:

...The finding is believed to represent the first time that enclosed sites identified with the biblical sites termed in Hebrew "gilgal", which were used for assemblies, preparation for battle, and rituals, have been revealed in the Jordan valley. The Hebrew word "gilgal" (a camp or stone-structure), is mentioned thirty-nine times in the Bible. The stone enclosures were located in the Jordan valley and the hill country west of it. To this day, no archaeological site has been proposed to be identified with the gilgal.

Between the years 1990 and 2008, during the Manasseh Hill-Country Survey that covers Samaria and the Jordan Valley, five such enclosures were found and excavated, all designed in the shape of a human foot. The site are believed to date back to the outset of the Iron Age I (the 13th-12th centuries BCE). Based on their size and shape, it is clear that they were used for human assembly and not for animals.

Two of the sites (in Bedhat esh-Sha'ab and Yafit 3) were excavated in the years 2002-2005, under the directorship of Dr. Ben-Yosef and the guidance of Adam Zertal. The findings, mostly of clay vessels and animal bones, date their foundation to the end of the 13th century BCE, and one of them endured up to the 9th or 8th century BCE without architectonic adjustment.

In at least two cases, paved circuits, some two meters wide, were found around the structures. These were probably used to encircle the sites in a eremony. "Ceremonial encirclement of an area in procession is an important element in the ancient Near East," Prof. Zertal says, adding that the origins of the Hebrew term "hag" (festival) in Semitic languages is from the verb "hug", which means "encircle". Thus, this discovery can also shed new light on the religious processions and the meaning of the Hebrew word for festival, "hag". [that "h" is a guttural sound 'ch']

According to Prof. Zertal, the "foot" constructions were used for ceremonial assemblies during Iron Age I (and probably after). When the religious center was moved to Jerusalem and settled there, the command of "aliya la-regel" (pilgrimage) became associated with Jerusalem. The source of the term, however, is in the sites that have now been discovered in the Jordan valley and the Altar on Mt. Ebal. "The biblical text testifies to the antiquity of these compounds in Israel's ceremonials, and the 'foot' structures were built by an organized community that had a central leadership," Prof. Zertal stated.