spin

No hostility intended at all!

Isn't it better to lay your cards on the table? And what do you think the answer is?

If that's how you do it. Let's look at the model of Qumran. (i dig. i write. i model (but not like you think ;-).) There are nice straight walls of the courtyard which houses L.34(35) in the south-east, yet L.34 is not plush with a straight southern wall. In fact there is no straight southern wall of the courtyard at all. It's staggered in a few steps. L.30's southern wall is set back a little from that of L.1-2 which it abuts on. L.36's southern wall abuts on that of L.30, but L.34 is set further north with what seems to be some buttressing to the south. (Thus you can see the evolution of the southern section of the main building.) Why do you think the model shows the inner southern wall as straight?


spin

XKV8R

yes. obviously. (but then again, things are always a bit more obvious after the error has been pointed out.)

the analogy stands. coins are designed to be portable. some are accidentally dropped, and others are intentionally placed in places for hiding or storage. the way most scholars speak about devaux's stratigraphic techniques (or lack thereof), stratigraphy at qumran means nothing. magen and peleg, magness, hirschfeld - all of them use de vaux's poor stratigraphy to argue their cases around the stratigraphy.

as for relating the coins to the site... yes. they belong to those that lived there. some sort of savings. proceeds from the sale of pottery? community wealth? either way, they belong to the site. i don't think the l-120 coins came from jerusalem... ;-)

spin

Magen and Peleg are also in favor of a late date based on the thickness of the plaster, which sounds reasonable, but I don't have anything to compare it with. I'm sure this is not the only round cistern in Judea.

Still we have an enclosure with L.113, L.116, L.127 and L.117 as its corners in existence before the water channel was extended south.

The next stop in this odyssey is L.91, which was the first extension of the water system. L.56/58 was added later.

Such a structure with the population to man it would require water security, which wasn't there. I'd guess that the first use of the site in Hasmonean times was seasonal.

It sounds reasonable to me for want of anything better to say, though perhaps what I see as the instability of guaranteed water supply would suggest a seasonal use of the site and would they have invested in such construction with only seasonal usage? That's why I'd ultimately be unable to answer the question definitively!


spin

XKV8R

cargill's model? ok.

are you looking at a photo of the model? or at the live model that was sent out to the test group? the live model shows the evolution of the southern wing on a series of switches (that i have difficulty using). during the hasmonean period, (before the addition of l-30) everything looks straight. if you switch off the roofs though, and then switch through time, you can see the remodeling of the wall, the addition of l-30, the addition of the wall between 56 and 58, etc. there's a lot going on under the roofs as you switch between the phases and the alternate reconstructions. must admit, it's pretty cool.

but that northern wall of the southern wing is anything but straight in the model. looks like all the trees were taken out too. the water is brown now too. looks a little different than it did in san diego...

XKV8R

ah. prior to l-91 is l-83, where the channel actually leads. i interpret this as a sedimentation pool (following magness). here the water goes in, settles, and the the water at the top flows east into the 56/58 pool. l-91 would come into existence after l-83.

spin

No error. You're trying to hard.

Yes, you can carry them around in a pocket. :Cheeky:

Let me ask you how many storages or hidings of coins were there compared to the number of accidental droppings?

It's not a matter of stratigraphy. The horde coins were all dated to the prior to the turn of the era.

You're not dealing with the fact that all the coins were dated before the 1st c. CE. If they were savings then they should have been kept check of and used when necessary, but they weren't. That rules out community wealth, unless you can explain how community money would be deposited for safekeeping and never reclaimed though the site was inhabited for another sixty years or more.


spin

spin

Just a photo.

Interesting. However, my understanding of the difficulties regarding the southern inner wall and L.56/58 suggests that the southern wing never got built. The outside wall sure, but the area between the southern side of the courtyard and the southern perimeter wall (north wall of L.77) is enormous. The western section of the building had nice load-bearing walls between L.1 & L.4, L.4 & L.12/13. What held the roof of L.56/58 up?

At the same time the cost of having those cisterns in L.56/58 was the weakening the area built up for L.34. Hence the buttress and probably the inner buttress of L.36.


spin

Amaleq13

I agree. That doesn't seem to change the apparent fact that a comparison between structures and moveable objects is flawed. Coins and scrolls seem more analogous to me than either are to permanent structures. There can be no question that the latter is directly connected to the primary structures. The only question is when. There is certainly a question whether moveable objects belong to a primary structure or the individuals living in it.

You can date the various buildings and add-ons to my property and obtain a fairly reliable idea of what is my doing and what is not but you simply cannot say the same for all the papers in my house. Many of them came from the previous owners but you would be hard pressed to determine that.

spin

(And she's following de Vaux, Arch & the DSS, p.9.)

L.83 is part of the same structure as L.85 & L.91.


spin

XKV8R

enormous? well, the site plan of qumran shows that the span between the inner and outer walls of the western wing is larger than the span between the walls of the southern wing (then again, the western walls are a bit thicker). however, the span of the eastern wing is about the same as the span of the western wing. the southern wing appears to be close to the span of the northern wing (before it's remodel).

thus it appears that we may have had a 2-storey structure all the way around an inner courtyard. however, there appear to have been problems in the southern wing. the water channel was redirected to the north of l-56, requiring the inner wall of the southern wing to be moved north. something also happened to the western end of the southern wing. there is no more wall there, jet it matches up pretty well with the l-83 sedimentation pool. plus, you get an expansion (magness says 2-stories, i say one) to the south of the southern wing (l-77). there was obvious instability in the southern wing. a partition wall was put in place, splitting l-56 and l-58. this wall is in the center of the souther wing and could have been used as support for the upper storey.

the western wall of the l-56 pool may have also reached up and acted as a support, as did the eastern wall of l-58.

keep in mind that the pools of loci 71 and 91 are not built within restricting walls, yet the are surprisingly of similar width of the wings of the main building. perhaps their width is limited by the span of a branch that would have covered them (or supported an upper floor).

gotta run.