Over on ANE Joe writes,
This weekend I had an opportunity to scan I. Hirschfelds monograph on the arch. of Qumran entitled /Qumran in Context/ and would for the sake of accuracy to briefly clarify the following cemetery data, some of which has been recently discussed on the List
1. Hirschfeld attempts in less that one page to deal with the
cemetery which he claims is not unique in the region. In so doing
he seems totally unaware of, or has not read recent articles by
myself and others. By so doing he states that there were 60
individuals, 33 men and 23 women and children and 4 unidentified,
apparently all from the Essene occupation which he regards as a a
manor. The phrase unidentified is certainly puzzling, unidentified
in terms of what? He appears to be totally unaware that the women
and children are Bedouin burials, a fact which is accepted by
almost everyone in the profession. Moreover, sub-adults are not
sexed by trained physical anthropologists as skeletally, all
appear to be female. He, as a field archaeologist with years of
experience should be able to tell the difference immed. between
Bedouin and non-Bedouin buri! als. By ignoring the obvious, he
bolsters his Manor argument, to accept the all male consensus
means that one has to believe in asexual reproduction, which works
quite well in the animal world, but not as Qumran.
2. Sometime ago, the list ran some postings by Goranson et al
concerning the fact that of the 4 photos on the cover, two had
nothing to do with Qumran (comb) or were Bedouin (beads). His
supporters claimed that one is not responsible for dust covers and
only responsible for what is in the book. Granted this may be
correct, however, when one then opens the book what does one see,
the Murrabat combs (p.179, fig 101) with the caption ‘Wooden comb
found at Qumran’ ! As I once curated this material, on the reverse
side of the combs are written their provenance, Mur=Murrabat. If
one is not responsible for that which is inside the book, then I
beg to know who is? Usually when I along with most of you reading
this posting publ. a scientific article we add, that we al! one
are responsible for the errors contained therein. One hopes that
in future editions these ‘grave errors’ will be corrected.
3. The Bedouin beads are not only published as being Essene, but
under the caption ‘Necklace (sic) from a woman’s grave. Had he
taken the time to look at the data he would have seen that not
only were the beads not Essene as I had originally pointed out and
seconded by Klammer, but the ‘necklace’ beads were found around
the ankles! I might add that of the thousands of Second Temple
female skeletons exc. by myself and colleagues over the years, we
have as of yet to find one skeleton, male of female with anklets. 4. From time to time I see reference that my visit to Germany to see
the skeletons in the German collection, before I started writing
about them, “ was all too brief”. I would like to add that, in
effect, it was all too long in terms of research time spent.
Sexing and aging skeletons is actually very simple for an
experienced anthropologist working with material which he has been
familiar with over the years. Give any of us a complete skeleton
in good condition and we will sex it in less than one minute,
aging may take a bit longer. Children are not sexed and aging them
on the basis of their dentition takes less than a minute as well,
part. when one is working with Qumran material which had only been
in the ground for ! ca. 200 years. It’s not rocket science and
when I see from time to time the ‘all too brief’ statement it
means automatically that one is not talking with one who
understands the profession. What took time was the unpacking and
re- packing, not the scientific work of aging and sexing for which
I came. While I was there for 4 days I believe, the scientific
side took less than one day. As British TV was interested in doing
a documentary on the subject I was obligated to spend more time
there until the film crew arrived going through the motions and
chatting with my hosts who were most grateful and obliging.
5. The map of the cemetery likewise is inaccurate, showing
east-graves as north- south.
6. Unfortunately, the black and white photos are very poorly printed,
through no fault of the excavator however, the photo of the
cemetery which allegedly was taken with a view towards the south,
appears to be none other than a photo of the 9 graves recently
excavated by the IAA and then covered over. True there were graves
there however one gets the false impression that what one is
seeing are graves in situ, whereas one is seeing graves recently
excavated in which the stones were then replaced. I might add that
all the north-south tombs contained adult males, in the
southeastern portion of the cemetery, where for the nay-sayers,
all the women and children appear.If one is going to write a book on Qumran as he and others have recently done, one in my opinion should at least take some time to read all the relevant literature before doing so. This is the minimum that one owes to ones students, who are paying for you to stand there in front of the class expressing your opinion. Not to have done so, is tantamount to academic negligence of the highest magnitude.
Lastly, despite the title /Qumran in Context/, what appears on the cemetery is, in my opinion, /Qumran// _out_ of Context./
Joe
-- Jim West, ThD "The venerable dead are waiting in my library to entertain me, and relieve me from the nonsense of surviving mortals" -- Samuel Davies
Biblical Studies Resources - http://web.infoave.net/~jwest Biblical Theology Weblog - http://biblical-studies.blogspot.com
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