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Qumran scroll jar with lid

From Archaeology to Archaeometry through Trans-disciplinary Research of our Cultural Heritage

Archaeology-Archaeometry website of Jan Gunneweg (Ph.D. in Archaeometry and M.A. Biblical Sciences). Has been over 32 years a Senior Staff member in the former Archaeometry Unit of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. Presently,a member of the Qumran Task Force in the application of scientific methods to Qumran Archaeology at the Hebrew University and since 2001 Head of the COST-Action G-8 Workgroup (Cooperation in Science and Technology)on Qumran's heritage by analytical techniques. In this context, special attention has been paid to the Dead Sea Scrolls in the light of the establishment of the provenience of Qumran pottery. Further attention has been focused on Qumran textile dating and its identification as well as the use of organic dyes of textiles.


The title "Trans-Interdisciplinary Research" encompasses analyses in all different domains of disciplines, such as archaeology, art, history, optics, physics, social sciences and chemistry. All these are at present applied to a variety of remains of our cultural heritage. These disciplines are used to understand the past and the present as we have these cultural remains, as well as to preserve them for the future generations.

Archaeometry i.e. measurements applied to archaeology--borrows its name from the science magazine Archaeometry founded at Oxford University (UK) during the early nineteen-fifties.
Archaeometry is a collective name for an analytical approach to define archaeological cultural remains by means of Natural Sciences to obtain quantitative and qualitative measurements in the domain of seven important fields in Archaeology:

  1. IDENTIFICATION of materials by chemistry, optics and mineralogy

  2. PROSPECTION (The research of Where and What to excavate)

  3. CHRONOMETRY (Techniques for Dating architectural, art and archaeological finds)

  4. PROVENIENCE (The search for the Site where an artefact was manufactured)

  5. ENVIRONMENTOLOGY (The study of ancient climatical, volcanical and geological changes in a given area at a given time span)

  6. BIOSPHERE (The research into the Palaeo-ethnic-botany and Zoo- and Anthropo-archaeology)

  7. RESTORATION-CONSERVATION (The study of how to restore and conserve ancient artifacts belonging to our cultural heritage)

Personal interest is primarily focused on the establishment of the chemical composition of ancient pottery through Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis to learn W H E R E pottery was manufactured (the Provenience, Provenance or Origin). This may help the archaeologist/historian in her/his search for the routes that pottery traveled (the Trade) and H O W ancient pottery was made (the Technology).
Furthermore, another specific interest is aimed at the intercalibrations between laboratories (as part of a sabbatical spent at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1989 and 1996 with Dr. Frank Asaro as well as our ongoing research at the Technical University of Budapest with Dr. Marta Balla

In 1967, a nuclear technique, Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis was developed to establish a quantitative chemical "fingerprint" of ceramic and volcanic obsidian, basalt and pumice.

Hence, specific ancient interregional Trade Relations, Trade Routes, perhaps Colonization and Migrations of families, tribes and masses are potentially being traced through the provenance of their artifacts

Also the ancient pottery MANUFACTURE TECHNOLOGY may be studied in the light of the chemical compositions obtained by Neutron Activation Analysis and may further be complemented by thin sections from analyzed pottery (Petrography) and Thermoluminescence combined with Magnetic Susceptibility. One may be able to tell how a specific potter levigated and/or tempered raw clay that he used to model a pot and what was the firing temperature of the kiln, providing important information about the technology that ancient man used.

The following items are shown in this homepage:

  • A description of the method of Neutron Activation Analysis used to establish the Origin of Pottery.

  • List of Publications and their Abstracts of our research on the Origin of Pottery by Neutron Activation Analysis and Textiles

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  • The Qumran-Science Project on the Provenance of the ceramic evidence by INAA at the Hebrew University, in collaboration with the Nuclear Facility at the Technical University of Budapest and the Ecole Biblique of Archaeology in Jerusalem

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  • The Qumran May 22-23 Meeting in Jerusalem Meeting of the Cost G8 Action and the Hebrew University on Bio- and Material Culture research of Qumran's Dead Sea Heritage in connection with the Preservation of Europe's Cultural Heritage. The meeting is scheduled as a cooperation between scholars who maintain the cultural heritage as art historians, archaeologists and conservators, as well as analytical scientists, as physicists and chemists, who perform non- or minimal destructive analytical testing.


  • The Qumran Meeting Proceedings Cover This is the cover of the Proceedings book that appeared in September 2006 in the next 3 months at Brussels


  • The Synchrotron 2004 Press Release on our collaboration with the Synchrotron at Grenoble on Qumran textiles. Fiber identification in cooperation with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Jan Gunneweg), Daresbury laboratory at Warrington (E. Pantos) and Kiel University (M. Mueller & Bridget Murphy).

  • The Bible vis-a-vis Archaeology and Science interaction as attacked in the Israeli media by some Israeli scholars

  • Faking archaeology to hit the evening news

  • The Edomite and anthropomorphic cult vessels found at 'En Hazeva in Israel's Arava desert, a Project on their provenance in collaboration with the Technical University of Budapest and the Israel Antiquities Authority

  • A Map of Israel with Sites from where ancient pottery has been analyzed by Neutron Activation Analysis (corresponding to the list of the Abstracts above)

  • The Anthropoid Coffins of the Late Bronze II Age a tentative solution for the technology employed to fire these more than life-size ceramic coffins

  • The Mugrabi Gate from the Wailing Wall esplanade towards the western Temple Precinct wall.

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    At the left the golden Dome of the Rock. In the middle, the temporary bridge from the Wailing Wall esplanade to the Gate of the Moors. On the right the excavations in progress to save the already excavated area from a dangerous landslide toward the North as well as the South. As one may notice, the bridge as well as the excavations are at the Jewish side of the wall that is visible on the back. The style of the future bridge is still under discussion. The excavations aren't.

  • Bronze Hoard at Tiberias A hoard of bronze artifacts that has been found nearby Tiberias at the Lake of Galilee

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  • Iz Perlman commemorated. Iz Perlman founded the Archaeometry Unit for Neutron Activation Analysis at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1973 and headed it until his retirement in 1983. In 1991, he died un untimely death. Lee, his spouse, died in 2005.

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  • A Caveat for the 2000 year old date from Masada that suddenly grew again

    • In June 2005, a date kernel put in soil started to grow again after 2000 years having laid around in the Masada fortress in Israel where it was picked up. A real wonder, as Professor Kislev told the media, specifically because a seed can be fertile until 200-300 years the most. However, Kislev made an small academic mistake to which is refered here: Kislev forgot to send the date kernel to a AMS C14 dating laboratory before the kernel was placed in the soil, so that he does not know how old the kernel really was! If someone else put the kernel in the soil, Kislev should have objected that the kernel prior to being placed in soil should have been analyzed for its date.
    To date such a kernel, one needs a minimal part of the shell as sample so that the kernel can still be put in soil and grow. One should be aware of the fact that every tourist who visits the Dead Sea area at present, first visits either En Gedi or Qumran and then Masada and in the Qumran shop adjacent to the excavations, one sells dates that are grown there or in En Gedi. Kernel spitting tourists over the past 50 years could have dropped a kernel at Masada that originated from the date-selling tourists centers and such a kernel would, of course, grow again, because it has been around for half a century at the most.
    Just that one is aware of date_growing_wonders in Masada

    An additional caveat is directed to all kind of seals, palaces and ostraca that are found in Israel during the past three years. They all have in common the assumption that they are certainly of the Iron Age I period and prove that David had his palace in Jerusalem, that personal king's seals point to kings mentioned in the Bible, whereas the latest find, an ostracon, shows the name of Goliat that is similar to the language of the Philistines, called "Lydian" or pre-Hebraic. However, first, no archaeologist has ever found the remnants of a "Philistine language" except for a single seal with some signs on it, whereas we are also obliged to believe that the non-semitic words "'alot" and "lat" indeed mean Goliat. And all this because of the urge to prove that the biblical story of Goliat is not a myth. Sic! During the last Archaeological Congress in Jerusalem (March 2006), it was explained that the inscription must be dated to the Iron Age II and means something as Goliat-alike, as if the name lives on in later periods.

    The next Caveat concerns the fact that lately too many finds appear too sudden in a too small territory of Israel in the hands of too few people to prove too vague historical evidence from holy writings that, in fact, can do without all these new finds. The Newsmedia are out to get first-hand on all these finds, whereas serious scientific studies of artifacts are considered "a big bore" and, thus, never hit any Evening News.


    Click on "back" or go to Content Qumran-Science Book, 2003

    Interested in becoming one's own home architect? Click here for a Style Excursion in Gunneweg and Kalfon's Home design in Jerusalem

    In case of comments or questions, please, feel free to send an e-mail to:

    E-mail Jan Gunneweg

    Snail-mail address: Dr. Jan Gunneweg
    Institute of Archaeology
    The Hebrew University
    91905 Jerusalem, Israel
    TEL & FAX: 972-2-6234830
    Phone with answering service and also Fax
    Mobile Phone: 050-213.3456

    Finally, there are many archaeologists and archaeometrists out there.

    Important ones are:

    1. Daresbury Laboratory - UK

    2. Archaeological Sciences page - UK (University of Bradford)

    3. Dead Sea Scrolls,Orion Institute (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)

    Web design and text, Jan Gunneweg, January 1996-2007

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