The topic of provenance has grown in importance within Qumran research over the past few years. Many researchers will be aware of the ASOR policy on unprovenanced artifacts and the SBL policy that is based upon it. The exact implications of such policies within our field of study may remain nevertheless unclear. Individuals may differ as to whether such policies are seen as sufficient with respect to the various issues they face (e.g., illegal trade and looting in general; presenting, publishing, or referring to unprovenanced material; authenticating material).

The IOQS would like to use this page as a forum for people to discuss the topic and to help them be able to develop opinions that are well informed. We would like to direct interested readers to the two articles linked here, which deal at length with the issue of provenance as it relates to the scrolls from Qumran. (We thank Brill for kindly allowing us to make these articles available here for download.)

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