The Stepped Stone Structure is the name given to the remains at a particular archaeological site (sometimes termed Area G) on the eastern side of the City of David, the oldest part of

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

. The curved, , narrow stone structure is built over a series of terraces (hence the name). A

casemate A casemate is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which guns are fired, in a fortification, warship, or armoured fighting vehicle.Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary When referring to antiquity, the term "casemate wall" mean ...

wall adjoins the structure from a northerly direction at the upper levels, and may have been the original city wall.

Excavation and interpretation

Macalister, the first to excavate the structure in the 1920s, called the remains he had found a "ramp" and believed it to be

Jebusite The Jebusites (; ISO 259-3 ''Ybusi'') were, according to the books of Joshua and Samuel from the Tanakh, a Canaanite tribe that inhabited Jerusalem, then called Jebus (Hebrew: ''Yəḇūs'', "trampled place") prior to the conquest initiated b ...

. Work continued in the 1960s with

Kathleen Kenyon Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon, (5 January 1906 – 24 August 1978) was a British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She led excavations of Tell es-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho, from 1952 to 1958, and has been call ...

, who dated the structure to the start of

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

II (1000–900 BCE).

Yigal Shiloh Yigal and Yigael are given names. People with those names include: *Yigal Allon (1918–80), Israeli politician, acting Prime Minister, a commander of the Palmach, and general *Yigal Amir (born 1970), Israeli assassin of Prime Minister of Israel Yi ...

excavated in the 1970s–80s.