Cave of Letters
| The Cave of Letters was first excavated by the late Yohanan Aharoni. He was of the opinion that the cave served the Essenes during the first century as a shelter when Qumran was actively involved in this sectarian life of Jews living in the Judean Hills and around the Dead Sea. |
| The late Yadin excavated afterwards and found the letters which he attributed to Bar Koziba (Bar Kochba) and thus the dating changed from the first century to the first half of the second century AD. |
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Bones, wood and textiles were subsequently used in order to receive a clear-cut date for the cave by radiocarbon dating. The pottery, on the contrary, did not show a parameter that might be used to get a better date for the cave. Most techniques applied to pottery do not include dating of pottery.
Nevertheless, we thought, the provenance of the pottery could be of some help to narrow down the date of the cave by comparing the Cave of Letters pottery with that analysed and produced from/at Jerusalem and Qumran, because the latter sites were destroyed before 70 AD. INAA proved that there was no link between the pottery made in Jerusalem or in Qumran, so that the Cave of Letters' pottery must be of a later date than 70 AD. |
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