Archaeology of Qumran

Abstract

The region of Qumran has yielded some of the most renowned archaeological remains of the ancient Near East. From accounts written in the course of the first millennium CE, we learn of various ancient discoveries of manuscripts, some of which are reported to have been found in jars near Jericho, 'in a rock-dwelling near Jericho; and in a cave by a Jewish group (see Driver, 1965, pp. 7-15). It is possible - though it cannot be proven - that one or more of these reported discoveries were made in the environs of Qumran (see, for example, Stegemann, 1998, pp. 68-71, 76-7), in which case one of these could represent the earliest documented 'archaeological' discovery in the region. We are on more certain ground with the reports by various travellers and explorers who roamed the region west of the Dead Sea during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these refer to the existence of various ruins - including walls, cisterns and graves - specifically in the area of Qumran (see Magness, 2002, pp. 22-4; Cargill, 2009, pp. 19-27). However, it was only in the mid-twentieth century that the archaeology of the region was propelled to mainstream status, the catalyst being the discovery of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls in eleven caves in this region. Since then, the 'archaeology of Qumran' has almost become a sub-field within the archaeology of the Second Temple Period as well as a pop-culture phenomenon.