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

180 JAN GUNNEWEG AND MARTA BALLA
3. to study which pottery was locally made and which was brought
in from elsewhere in order to learn about trade between Qumran
and surrounding settlements.
A pilot study on the provenance of Qumran pottery found in the
settlement and the caves began in 1998 at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, in collaboration with the Nuclear Reactor Facility at
the Technical University of Budapest and with the Ecole Biblique
et Archeologique Frangaise in Jerusalem. This paper is divided into
a description of the method that was used to obtain the most trustworthy
results by tracing the Qumran pottery to its manufacturing
site and showing an example of what we have learned.
The study of pottery is usually the only window we have into the
lives of the earliest civilizations. Not only can one get a view into
the evolution of an early technology based upon pottery but one
may also learn in some detail about the development of what may
well be the earliest commercial trade or simply human interactions
between individuals or groups of people. This applies to the Qumran
settlement as it does to any other site.
Most of the published papers on the pottery of Qumran are in
agreement that the pottery was made at the site. 1 In spite of the
validity of such a statement, there remains some uncertainty concerning
which pottery was definitely manufactured at Qumran, which
pottery is possibly locally made but dubious, and which has to be
excluded as locally made altogether. Of the third group, one may
ask from where this pottery came. These findings will bear weight
when trying to identify the site(s) where the scroll jars were made
and whence they came to Qumran. Perhaps some of the scrolls can
be traced by the provenience of the jars. We are convinced that in
the light of the results of analysis of the pottery assemblages published
by us over the past twenty-five years, 2 laboratory methods can
be of great benefit, specifically in the case of Qumran.
1 [Editors' note: For recent studies on the pottery of Qumran, see Jodi Magness,
"Qumran Archaeology: Past Perspectives and Future Prospects," in The Dead Sea
Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, vol. 1, ed. P. W. Flint and J. C.
VanderKam (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 47-77, especially 59-61 and bibliography at
75-77, and Jodi Magness, "The Community at Qumran in Light of Its Pottery,"
in Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities
and Future Prospects, ed. M. O. Wise, N. Golb, J. J. Collins, and D. G. Pardee,
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 722 (New York: New York Academy
of Sciences, 1994), 39-50.]
2 J. Gunneweg, I. Perlman and J. Yellin 1983, The Provenience Typology and Chronology
of Eastern Terra Sigillata, Qedem 17, Monograph of the Institute of Archaeology at