Thanks for your response, Joe.
You wrote:
>As for your query, the presence of the east-woman
>burial in the cemetery does not in my opinion present
>any problems as there are def. women in the cemetery,
>however all of the woman there like the males are
>buried north-south as in Qumran which is dateable to
>the same period. Since Jews do not deviate from this
>practice of burying men in one direction, women in the
>other, the burial is simply a another Bedouin burial.
I was confused about this last sentence, thinking by
"one direction" you meant n-s and "the other" meant e-w,
but this doesn't make sense to me so I gather you meant
something else, perhaps for example male with head to
the north, female to the south. Is that correct?
As to the one e-w burial at el-Ghuweir, its location
between two n-s tombs suggests that it is an integral
part of the cemetery. Otherwise, one would have to
suppose that the ancient gravediggers left a space
between two n-s tombs which co-incidentally was wide
enough for a late e-w burial.
(However, I have reread your DSD article and the case for
e-w burials at Qumran being Bedouin seems quite
reasonable.)
Bar-Adon goes into detail giving the form of four of the
graves, showing them to be the same range of shaft-tombs
as found at Qumran. He makes no differentiation between
the women's graves at el-Ghuweir and those of the men,
accepting the cemetery as apparently homogeneous (with
doubts about the one e-w tomb). Can we assume that there
is a precedent for women in such a cemetery as the type
found at Qumran?
Steckoll notes three female burials (G.6, 7, & 8 -- G.6
with baby) in the main cemetery all being n-s (RQ 6 p.335).
>Unfort. he does not go into any details re: depth,
>orientation etc. I have the impression that the graves
>were dug by workers/volunteers and then transferred to
>the anthro. labs and age/sex there.
This would make his reference to the Bedouin being "expert
in differentiating ... between ancient graves and Bedouin
sites of recent origin" rather strange. I thought it
implied that Bedouin were involved in the digging. How do
you read it?
>Thus what would
>have been obvious to the physical anthropologist
>dealing with burials, escaped his attention esp. since
>there was a nearby Bedouin cemetry.
He is quite aware of the Bedouin e-w burials found in a
cemetery to the south which featured the face to the south
towards Mecca, suggesting that he had looked into the
matter firsthand. I find it hard to understand that he
wouldn't indicate such irregularities in his own excavation
of the el-Ghuweir cemetery. He does talk as though he is
aware of what is, and what is not, Bedouin when, after
describing the Bedouin cemetery, he goes on to say that it
was not case with the 18 tombs he investigated on the north
hill.
Bar-Adon presents his understanding of the circumstances
of this cemetery and the problems concerning it as
relatively exhaustive.
And thanks for the information about the use of madder.
It didn't make much sense before.
Cheers,
Ian
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