Courtesy École Biblique et Archéologique Française
Original, but accurate? Much of the controversy surrounding Qumran today centers around the lack of published material from Roland de Vaux’s excavation of the site in the 1950s. De Vaux died without publishing a final excavation report. This section drawing (published by Robert Donceel and Pauline Donceel-Voûte) is the only one from de Vaux’s voluminous notes and drawings that is accessible to scholars. The numbers on the left side of the drawing represent different strata, or layers, of excavation, showing that de Vaux used the same locus number for more than one stratum.