Kathleen Kenyon discovered the tower built against the fortification wall inside the town during excavations between 1952 and 1958 CE, in trench I. The tower highlights the importance of Jericho for the understanding of settlement patterns in the Sultanian period or culture in the southern Levant. The Tower has been interpreted as a fortification, an anti-flooding system, a ritual centre and a political symbol of communal power and territorial claim. The tower is directly connected to a substantial stone wall, suggesting a coordinated building program unprecedented for the time.

Kenyon provided evidence that both, the wall and the tower, constructions dated much earlier, during the Neolithic period, which is the latest part of the Stone Age, and were part of an early proto-city. This period was characterized by the transition from mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled agricultural communities in the Levant.

Most spectacular finds at Jericho, however, do not date to the time of biblical Joshua, roughly the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE), as it was assumed in the earlier days of the Jericho excavations but rather to the earliest part of the Neolithic era, before even the technology to make pottery had been discovered.

circa 8000 BCE

The tower was exposed and published during mid-twentieth-century and later fieldwork at Tell es-Sultan. Kathleen M. Kenyon’s excavations in the 1950s first brought the tower into modern archaeological literature and re-situated both the tower and the associated massive stone wall within a Neolithic, not Bronze Age, horizon—revising earlier interpretations that tied the monuments to much later historic episodes. Kenyon’s stratigraphic method and section drawings remain the primary architectural record for the structure; subsequent teams (including later Italian–Palestinian campaigns and targeted studies by researchers at Tel Aviv University) have revisited the tower’s context, refined radiocarbon results, and reopened debate about function. The presence of a substantial ditch cut through bedrock outside the wall, the tower’s close physical bond to the wall, the scale of stonework, and associated PPNA domestic and ritual finds at Jericho together mark the site as one of the earliest examples of communal monumental building in the southern Levant and a critical data point for models of early sedentism and social organisation.

circa 8000 BCE

Exterior Structure
The tower’s base is a circular platform, built of large, roughly hewn stones forming thick walls. The outer surface is slightly inclined inward, giving it a tapered profile or conical shape. The tower is almost 9 metres (30 feet) in diameter at the base, decreasing to 7 metres (23 feet) at the top with walls approximately 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) thick. The construction of the tower is estimated to have taken 100 working days. The tower along with the wall may have served as a defence against flood-water, with the tower used for ceremonial purposes as well. The walls are solid, without windows, and the construction method demonstrates careful planning, with courses of stone laid in consistent horizontal layers. The connection between the tower and an adjoining segment of the settlement’s perimeter wall indicates that the structure was integrated into the larger fortification system or boundary architecture. The tower’s foundation is cut into the mound’s slope, suggesting adaptation to the local topography and possibly intentional placement for maximum visibility.

circa 8000 BCE

Interior
Built during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period around 8000 BCE, the undressed stone tower, placed in the centre of the west side of the tell, contained an internal staircase with 22 stone steps. These stair steps are the first known staircase up to the top, made by flat cut blocks of limestone. The high quality of masonry work clearly shows that this was the work of a new people, with extensive experience and a long tradition in stone masonry.

Kenyon’s plates and later photographs indicate about twenty-two steps leading to a former pavement/platform level at the top. Some stair treads and the upper interior appear to have been rendered with plaster, and openings visible in historic photographs and drawings show at least one lower doorway into the tower and a higher doorway or opening toward the top. The staircase is too narrow to have easily accommodated large groups moving in opposite directions, which has practical implications for hypotheses that treat the tower primarily as a defensive parapet or as mass circulation architecture.

circa 8000 BCE

Speculation (see notes) persists about the purpose of the tower and it may have had several purposes. Archaeologists Ran Barkai and Roy Liran used computers to reconstruct sunsets and recently found that when the Tower of Jericho was built, nearby mountains cast a shadow on it as the sun set on the longest day of the year. The shadow fell exactly on the structure and then spread out to cover the entire village of Jericho.

Barkai argues that the tower, with its connections to astronomical events, was built as a symbol of the community's strength and cohesiveness, in an era when humans were still adjusting to a settled life. Barkai further notes that the structure was used to create awe and inspiration to convince people into a harder way of life with the development of agriculture and social hierarchies. He concluded:

We believe this tower was one of the mechanisms to motivate people to take part in a communal lifestyle.

For the tower, carbon dates published in 1981 and 1983 indicate that it was built around 8300 BCE and stayed in use until circa 7800 BCE.

Some early theories had also suggested the tower provided defense or flood control. But those ideas were abandoned as it became clear that Jericho faced no serious risk from either warring neighbors or surging rivers.

circa 8000 BCE

Although the identity and number of the inhabitants of Jericho during the PPNA period is still under debate, it is known that during the PPNA, Jericho was a relatively large and densely occupied settlement, covering roughly 2.5 hectares and supporting an estimated population of 200–300 people. The inhabitants practiced early forms of agriculture, cultivating cereals such as barley and wheat while continuing to hunt wild game and gather wild plants.

The settlement was encircled by a substantial stone wall—over 1.5 meters thick and up to 3.6 meters high—marking one of the earliest examples of large-scale communal construction. Houses were typically round or oval, built of mudbrick atop stone foundations, with plastered floors. The community displayed a level of social organization capable of mobilizing coordinated labor for monumental projects such as the tower and wall. It is speculated that the wall and tower would have taken a hundred men more than a hundred days to construct, thus suggesting some kind of social organization, division of labour, and classes. This period reflects a critical transitional stage in human history, where permanent settlement, architectural innovation, and increasingly complex social structures were emerging in the Fertile Crescent.