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Re: SV: SV: orion Qumran habitation dates
Dear Greg,
Thanks for your response to some of my questions. Just a few comments in
return. Based on your post, it appears that--if all the coins had been lost
before any publication--you would consider the site no more datable than to
late second temple period. I suggest that your 3 April post underestimates
the datability of the material remains. You allow habitation during
Alexander's time and for part of the 60s CE. This means a gap from 76 BCE
or before till 60 CE or after; 130 or 140 years or so. In my opinion, that
is not plausible. You wrote about problems of dating ranges; but 130-140
years far exceeds your examples. I suggest you underestimate the
comparative pottery dating knowledge of such experts as J. Magness amd R.
Bar-Natan; and the use of loci. Random distribution of coins from unsealed
loci is not the best dating means. And one should take into account the
nature of the site: e.g., this may be too few coins for a trading post. But
the hoard (of Tyrian silver) accords with a centralized treasury of a
religious group.
You suggested the dishes may not have been used the week before the
31 earthquake. But which is more likely: that or that they remained in
place undisturbed since the time of Alexander Jannaeus--45 years or more?
You asked about comparative coin data: The Hebrew University MA
thesis and article by D. T. Ariel in S.B.F. Liber Annuus 32 (1982) 273-326,
and dig reports beyond those cited there. Your use of coins does not
resemble what I learned on the site of Sepphoris as assistant to the coin
expert, Dr. Joyce Raynor. For another example: A. Drori and Y. Magen
rejected de Vaux's proposed twenty-some year gap in habitation after 31 BCE
(Jerusalem Post week May 21, 1994). Many more sites have been dug since De
Vaux's excavation; that Herod minted fewer coins per year than Alexander is
evident.
Stephen Goranson
goranson@duke.edu