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Re: SV: orion-list Qumran skeletons/gender
Beste Greg:
I hesitate to mingle in the discussion, based only on personal
recollection from Zias lecture in Boston (without waiting for the
publication of Zias lecture, which will appear soon). But my
recollections are strenghed by a long conversation with Zias (also
in Boston). I may be wrong, but my recollections are clear.
Zias lecture deal with two different issues: the female skeletons on
the main cemetery and the skeletons (male, female, and of
children) in the two secondary burial places near the main
cemetery.
As for the first issue, he corrected the identification of some
remains as female (done in the RevQ article, and after having
examined the remains in Munchen) mainly on the base of the size
of the alleged females skeletons; they much taller than the average
female body of the time. Zias concluded that no females were
buried in the main cemetery, and said in passing that
anthropologist change quite often their appreciation of the
As for the second issue, he convincly proved that the secondary
burial places were of recent date (about 200 years old) and different
in type and contents from the main cemetery. The different state of
rpeservation of the bones of the main cemetery (very brittle) and of
the secondary cemeteries (far less broken) were the first indication
of a differente age of both collections of bones.The size of the pit
(about 40 cm in the side burial places, agains about 2 metres in
the main cemetery), the form of the pit (straight in the side
cemetery but with a side cavity for the body at the bottom covered
by stones in the main cemetery) the presence of decorative arm
and legs strings of coloured beans in the side cemeteries (unheard
off in jewish burials and not found in the main cemetery, but
common in bedouin burials) and the expected mix of men, women
and children as in other burial places (in the side cemeteries, but
not in the main), lead him to conclude that the main cemetery and
the side cemeteries were of a quite different sort and not only of
different age, and to suggest that the secondary cemeteries were
unrelated to the main one. The parallels with other bedouin
cemeteries on the region, lead him to suggest that the secondary
cemeteries were no other thing that bedouins cemeteries of recent
date. He also rapidly mentioned, that analysis by Carbon 14 of the
bones of the secondary cemeteries, has given a date of about 200
years for them, thus settled the matter.
This is all I recall, but I may answer some of your queries.
Greetings and best wishes
Florentino García Martínez
Qumran Instituut, University of Groningen
For private reply, e-mail to "F. Garcia Martinez" <F.Garcia.Martinez@theol.rug.nl>
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