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International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B5. Istanbul 2004
about 1100-1200 graves had never been properly investigated.
Therefore, its function, meaning and significance, especially
religious, had remained unclear. The other central questions
concerning Qumran were the dating of the settlement and the
graveyard, and their subsequent function in the local, regional
and international contexts of the ancient world. The final
objective of the field survey was to produce an initial
reproduction of the topographic development of the site and its
immediate surroundings.
32. A brief description of the site
Khirbet Qumran is located ca. 22 km east of Jerusalem at the
shore of the Dead Sea. Qumran is situated in the Dead Sea Rift
(DSR) between two deep wadis, in an area where tectonic
activity is frequent and where mean annual precipitation is very
low. The environment of today is harsh and difficult to
cultivate, but the arid climate and the remoteness of the site has
contributed significantly to the preservation of the
archaeological structures and material found in the region.
The scttlement of Qumran is situated on a marl terrace just
below the steep cliffs of the Judacan desert plateau, overlooking
the broken ground and the plain of the Dead Sea. The size of the
Qumran settlement is approximately 100 m x 80 m. The
absolute height of the Qumran settlement is today ca. - 330 m
below sea level (bsl), and nearly 90 m above the present day
Dead Sea level (presently ca. — 418 m bsl). The Dead Sea is
shrinking rapidly due to evaporation as well as other reasons
and the drop is estimated to be close 70-80 cm per year.
It has been assumed that the settlement of Qumran was founded
in the Hellenistic period in the second century B.C. and
destroyed during the Roman military campaigns during the First
Jewish War A.D. 68-73. There were no significant activities at
the site following its destruction in the late first century A.D.
(There are different opinions on the exact dating of the
settlement, starting from a suggested occupation period that
covered about two centuries down to only about one century).
3.3. Collection of data
The members of the team executed fieldwork during several
weeks each year during four consecutive years. However, the
collection of data was not limited to a specific period of the
calendar year. Instead, work was done throughout all of the
seasons because seasonal, environmental and climatological and
cosmic effects also needed to be evaluated empirically in
relation to the archaeological record of the site.
The survey of the Qumran area and the collection of data for a
digitally stored map database began in the 1990s with the study
of old cartographical material available. Especially helpful were
the archaeological maps prepared by the British pioneers that
visited Qumran in the 1870s and which were published for the
Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund (Clermont-
Ganneau, 1874, 1896. See Fig. 1). Charles Clermont-Ganneau’s
map includes what could then be seen of the ruins of Qumran
but also the graves in the cemetery. Extensive geographic
surveys, maps and studies can also be found in the Géographie
de la Palestine 1-11 by F. M. Abel (Abel, 1933, 1938), which
were published in the 1930s. Their usefulness are based
especially on the fact that names of ancient places, sites and
areas are included, enabling the ancient and modern contexts to
be related. Good historical maps are also available in the Tabula
Imperii Romani (TIR), which came out in 1994 (Tsafrir et alii,
1994). Other maps include the regional maps, such as the Atlas
59
of Israel (1970/1985), or the archaeological settlement maps or
excavation maps of Qumran, which are included in the archives
of R. de Vaux in Jerusalem (Ecole Biblique et Archéologique
Frangaise), and which already have been partly published. The
best publicly available topographic maps of Qumran are the
maps in the scale 1: 50 000 (Qumran is located on the map
Kalya 12-1, 11 1995. UTM coordinates).
doaunie
oes aimes ATE
Figure 1. Charles Clermont-Ganneu's map of the Qumran
settlement and graveyard from the year 1874 reveals the
peculiar and coherent orientation of the structures. Courtesy of
the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Excellent aerial photographs of Qumran were taken by the
Jordanian Air Force in the 1950s (see, e.g., Fig. 2), and we
thank the École Biblique et Archéologique Française,
Jerusalem, for letting us have duplicates of them. These show
the settlement of Qumran and the cemetery in a high-resolution
image. The photographs were later transformed to digital form
to improve the quality and detail of the photographs. CORONA
declassified satellite photographs (optical panchromatic, pixel
1,8 m) are inexpensive (about 20 USD for a photograph
covering perhaps as much as hundreds of km”), but as far as the
area of Qumran is concerned, they are disappointing since the
photographs taken in the 1960s and 70s are cloudy and blurred.
Figure 2. Aerial photograph of Qumran taken by the Royal
Jordanian Air Force in the 1950s. The same orientation of the
settlement and the main graveyard are clearly visible. Courtesy
of École Biblique et Archéologique Francaise, Jerusalem,
