Yuval Peleg, Israel Antiquities Authority District Archaeologist for Eastern Samaria and the Jordan Valley.

In 1993, 40 years after R. de-Vaux excavated at Qumran, renewed excavations commenced revealing important new discoveries. The excavations were carried out in 1993, and from 1996 to 2004 under the supervision of Dr. Itzhak Magen and myself. Thousands of artifacts were unearthed, including numerous shards and complete pottery vessels, glass and stone vessels, coins that signified the various stages of the site, jewellery, ostraka and organic materials. Items found were from the Iron Age and from the Second Temple period. In addition, parts of the main water channel were unearthed. Pottery workshops and installations for processing dates and balsam were also found. The results of the new excavations enable us to understand the archaeology and history of Qumran in a new different way.

Speaker Biography
Yuval Peleg is the Israel Antiquities Authority District Archaeologist for the Jordan Valley. His MA in archaeology is from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. For the last 16 years, Peleg has been an archaeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Head district archaeologist of the Jordan Valley since 1994. He was in charge of many excavations including Qumran, the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls, from 1993 to 2004. As a result of this excavation a new theory about the origins of the settlement of Qumran, its function and its inhabitants was formulated. Peleg was also in charge of the excavation at The Good Samaritan Inn, an unknown palace built by Herod the Great between Jerusalem and Jericho, from 2004 to 2007. He also oversaw the Ancient Hebron excavation in 1998, where he found a late Bronze Age tomb with hundreds of artifacts including pottery and stone vessels, jewellery and weapons of that period.

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