According to the book of Kings, “Hazael king of Syria went up, and fought against Gath, and took it: and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem.” In response, the Judean king Jehoash forestalled an attack on the capital by paying Hazael an impressive ransom. Israeli archaeologists have recently applied a new technique, involving the analysis of magnetic fields, to charred bricks in the ruins of Gath—located southeast of Ashdod—and found support for the biblical account. Judy Siegel-Itzkovich writes:
The prevalent hypothesis, based on the Bible, historical sources, and carbon-14 dating, attributes the destruction of the structure to the devastation of Gath by Hazael, King of Aram Damascus, around 830 BCE. But a previous paper . . . proposed that the building had not burned down but rather collapsed over decades and that the fired bricks found in the structure had been fired in a kiln prior to construction.
“Our findings signify that the bricks burned and cooled down in situ, right where they were found, namely in a conflagration in the structure itself, which collapsed within a few hours,” [the director of the study, Yoav] Vaknin declared.
In other words, the brick structure appears to have been burned down, most likely by an invading army.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-780745