Cleaning and radiocarbon dating of material from Khirbet Qumran Johannes van der Plicht, Jan Gunneweg, Joan Taylor, Mireille Belis, Gregory Doudna, Helge Egsgaard, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, and Kaare Lund Rasmussen In the Qumran Proceedings 2006 A new battery of radiocarbon dates of linen, wood, and parchment excavated at Khirbet Qumran and in the caves at Qumran by Farther Roland de Vaux from ?cole Biblique et Arch?ologique Fran?ais in 1949-1954 are presented. The data consist of two series of dates, one series conducted on samples treated only by the standard AAA pretreatment procedure. The other of an overlapping series in which the samples were cleaning for contaminants prior to AAA and radiocarbon dating. Several samples can be identified as contaminated, probably with conservational fluids, whereas some were found not to be affected by contamination. Based on our results we recommend that samples from Khirbet Qumran and the caves residing in museums should be analysed and cleaned prior to radiocarbon dating. The majority of the dates fall in the range from 2nd century BC to 1st century AD, but two samples showed earler dates, two were medieval, and two dated to recent times. These results stipulate the need to treat the archaeological evidence from Khirbet Qumran and the caves with great care and have an open mind to the occupation of the site at other periods as well as the time between the first and second revolt. Comments? Please write: Jan Gunneweg To return, click Archaeometry abstracts of our work or click "BACK" or click the Homepage . Jan Gunneweg Ph.D., The Hebrew University, revised November 2005