Dead Sea

Dead Sea

New Discoveries in the Cave of Letters

edited by
Carl E. Savage, Philip Reeder,
Richard A. Freund, and Harry M. Jol

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin

Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Savage, Carl E., editor. | Reeder, Philip, editor.

Freund, Richard A., editor. | Jol, H. M. (Harry M.), editor.

Title: Dead Sea: new discoveries in the Cave of Letters /

edited by Carl E. Savage, Phil Reeder, Richard A. Freund, Harry M. Jol.

Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2018.

Series: Crosscurrents: new studies on the Middle East; vol. 2

ISSN 2381-2443 (print) | ISSN 2381-2451 (online)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016015058 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3427-2 (hardcover: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4539-1884-5 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4208-6 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-4331-4212-3 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Letters, Cave of the (Israel)

Excavations (Archaeology)—Judaea, Wilderness of.

Classification: LCC DS110.L37 D43 | DDC 296.1/55—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015058

DOI 10.3726/978-1-4539-1884-5

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2018 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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About the editors

Carl E. Savage is Associate Professor of Biblical Archaeology at the Theological School of Drew University and Assistant Director of Excavations of the Bethsaida Excavations Project. He received his M.Div. and D.Min. in history of Biblical interpretation from the Wesley Theological Seminary, and his M.Phil and Ph.D. in origins of Christianity and Judaism from Drew University. His publications include Biblical Bethsaida: An Archaeological Study of the First Century (2011) and “Political Propaganda in Gold” (2013), among others.

Philip Reeder is Dean of the Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Duquesne University. He received a doctoral degree in geography with specializations in soils, hydrology, and water resource management from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He has published a multitude of articles and delivered hundreds of invited lectures.

Richard A. Freund is the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. His most recent book is Digging through History: Archaeology and Religion from Atlantis to the Holocaust (2012).

Harry M. Jol earned his Ph.D. from the University of Calgary and is Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. He has published over one hundred articles, is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and has worked at numerous archaeological sites in Israel.

About the book

Dead Sea: New Discoveries in the Cave of Letters is a multidisciplinary study of the Cave of Letters in the Nahal Hever of the Judean desert, a site reputed for having contained the most important finds evidencing the Bar Kokhba revolt, including the cache of bronzes found buried there and the papers of Babatha, one of the few direct accounts of the context of the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century CE. Chapters by diverse scholars report on and discuss the ramifications of the 1999–2001 expedition to the site, the first organized archaeological activity there since the expeditions at Nahal Hever by Yigal Yadin in 1960–1961. Using advanced technological methodologies alongside more “traditional” archaeological techniques, the team explored several research hypotheses. The expedition sought to determine whether the material collected in the cave could substantiate the hypothesis that the cave was a place of refuge during both the Bar Kokhba revolt and the earlier Great Revolt against the Roman Empire. The expedition also researched the viability of a relatively long-term occupation of the cave while under siege by Roman forces, questioning whether occupants would have been able to cook, sleep, etc., without severely degrading the cave environment as a viable place for human habitation. The individual chapters represent the result of analysis by scholars and scientists on different aspects of the material culture that the expedition uncovered.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Baruch A. Levine

Preface

Philip Reeder, Richard A. Freund, Harry M. Jol, and Carl E. Savage

Chapter One: The 1999–2001 Acknowledgements and Summary of Research at the Cave of Letters

Richard A. Freund

Chapter Two: Depositional Processes and Paleoenvironmental Implications of the Cave of the Letters and Other Rift-Shoulder Deposits

Amos Frumkin

Chapter Three: Overview of New Geoarchaeological Discoveries in the Cave of Letters

John (Jack) F. Shroder

Chapter Four: Mapping the Cave of Letters

Philip Reeder

Chapter Five: Ground Penetrating Radar Subsurface Imaging within the Cave of Letters

Harry M. Jol

Chapter Six: Electrical Imaging and Metal Detection in the Cave of Letters

Paul D. Bauman

Chapter Seven: Microclimatic Variations and Patterns of Cave Use at the Cave of Letters

Philip Reeder←v | vi→

Chapter Eight: Return to Locus 57y: A Re-Examination of Some of the Bronze Artifacts from Hall A of the Cave of Letters

Richard A. Freund

Chapter Nine: The Niche of Skulls in the Cave of Letters

Nicolae Roddy

Chapter Ten: A First Century Occupation in the Cave of Letters? Results from the B/C Passage

Carl E. Savage

Chapter Eleven: Textiles, Threads and Cordage from the Cave of Letters — 2000–2001 Excavations

Orit Shamir

Chapter Twelve: The Meaning of Bar Kokhba Coins and Their Distribution

Fred Strickert

Chapter Thirteen: The Date of the Psalms Scroll from the Cave of Letters

Walter C. Bouzard

Chapter Fourteen: Archaeology, Museology, and Identity: The Display of the Cave of Letters Materials in the Shrine of the Book (1965–2004)

Adolfo D. Roitman

Addendum 1: Dendroarchaeological Investigations at the Cave of Letters

Nili Liphschitz

Addendum 2: Provenance Determination of Some Selected Pottery Shards from the Cave of Letters by Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis

Jan Gunneweg and Marta Balla

Addendum 3: Rock Breaking at the Cave of Letters

Shachar Argov

List of Contributors

Index ←vi | vii→

Figures

Figure 1.1: The Coins of the Merrill Cave of Letters Excavations

Figure 1.2: Hall B Hearth. Bed post leg (courtesy Cave of Letters Project, 1999)

Figure 1.3: Child’s sandal found in Hall A in the Cave of Letters

Figure 1.4: Final Survey Map of the Cave of Letters

Figure 2.1: Cave of Letters location map showing additional sites of rift-related sediments on the Dead Sea escarpment

Figure 2.2: Location of the Cave of the Letters (COL) in Naḥal Ḥever: satellite view

Figure 2.3: Location of the two entrances of the Cave of the Letters in the northern wall of Naḥal Ḥever: view from the south side of the canyon. Photo: Vladimir Buslov

Figure 2.4: Profile and plan of the Cave of the Letters. Entrance 1 sediments are shown in the profile

Figure 2.5: The cross-section of Entrance 1 sedimentary materials

Figure 2.6: The limestone ceiling near entrance 1 and the detritic sediment fill below the ceiling

Figure 2.7: Laminar dolomitic aquatic sediments at the bottom-left of entrance 1 section

Figure 2.8: Dolomite crystals overgrown by smaller autogenic quartz crystals in a scanning electron microscope photograph

Figure 2.9: View to entrance 1 of the Cave of the Letters (top) and its sediments

Figure 2.10: Sediments at the upper part of entrance 1

Figure 2.11: Geological cross section of Naḥal Ḥever canyon with the Cave of the Letters, showing also the probable morphology when the cave was cut by the canyon

Figure 2.12: The Cave of the Letters sediments at entrance 1 ←vii | viii→

Figure 2.13: Schematic diagram showing possible late Cenozoic formations in the Dead Sea depression. 'Sedom' and 'Bira' refer to the uppermost parts of these formations