For example some of the people and places mentioned are known to have existed, but others are not.
Are not, what? Known about...yet? Or, are known
not to have existed?
It’s real hard to prove a negative.
Pontius Pilate was thought to have been fictitious, at one time.
So, too, with King David.
The same with Hezekiah’s tunnel.
Until the evidence they discovered proved these people and places existed.
The Bible is always put down first. (You don’t notice that?)
But archaeology, more often than not, vindicates it.
When it doesn’t, either the researchers are looking in the wrong place & therefore haven’t found it, or the evidence found is misinterpreted.
And, heaven forbid,
no evidence of a Biblical account describing a miracle can
ever be interpreted in support of such! The entire scientific establishment and their materialistic POV’s would have to be readjusted and retooled. The current system would crumble.
So when it can’t be explained to suit naturalism? Many times, it’s “we don’t know.” That happens a lot in geology!