historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

HOW NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS CAN
ASSIST RESEARCH INTO THE PROVENANCE OF
THE POTTERY AT QUMRAN*
JAN GUNNEWEG AND MARTA BALLA
Hebrew University of Jerusalem Technical University of Budapest
Introduction
The Dead Sea Scrolls are perhaps the best known ancient documents
discovered in the twentieth century. Over the past fifty years,
the scrolls have been painstakingly cleaned, pieced together, and partially
or fully published. The origin of the scrolls, however, has
remained an enigma, as have the people who allegedly wrote these
scrolls. In light of this situation, the present authors decided to trace
the provenance of the pottery of Qumran, including the scroll jars
in which the scrolls were apparently found. The word "apparently"
is intentional, because no scroll has ever been removed from a jar by
an archaeologist.
As the title of this paper suggests, neutron activation analysis (NAA)
is able to shed light on the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls by tracing
the pottery which the Essenes allegedly used and, specifically, the
storage jars used to ship or hide manuscripts which were uncovered
in the Qumran caves.
The goal of our ongoing research project is:
1. to trace Qumran pottery by its chemistry rather than by style
because the latter has not provided the expected information in terms
of relating style to a chronology and stratigraphy at the site;
2. to establish the relationship between the pottery found in the
Qumran settlement and the eleven surrounding caves where scroll
Qumran o
materials have been found;
* Our sincere thanks to Jean-Baptiste Humbert, O.P., of the Ecole Biblique et
Archeologique Francaise in Jerusalem, for the samples from de Vaux's excavation
at Qumran, to the Dorot Foundation for financing the study, and to Zsuzsa Molnar
and Laszlo Balazs at the nuclear reactor in Budapest.