Surveys, Groundscans, and Excavations
Since 1988, Eisenman has led the Judean Desert Explorations/Excavations Project under the auspices of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins at CSULB he headed. These expeditions included students from CSULB and other institutions. Its aim was to search for possible new caves that might contain scrolls. It was his feeling that, though the Bedouins in their enthusiasm to find artifacts had clearly been in almost all accessible caves, there might have been others, inaccessible to them or hidden in some manner or cave-ins. These were the best possibilities of finding new Scrolls.
In the first expedition, between 1988 and 1989, he and his students were involved in the excavation of a cave a kilometer or two south of Qumran, in which they found some Bronze Age artifacts, including an arrow that had evidently been shot into the cave, which still displayed its lacquer rings and feather marks, an oil jug, and the wooden remains possibly of a plough.
From 1989 to 1992 Eisenman and his students conducted a walking survey of the entire Dead Sea shore and its environs from seven kilometers north of Qumran to thirty-five kilometers south, past Wadi Murabba'at, to the Northern limits of Ein Gedi, mapping the whole area. In this survey they went into some 485 caves and depressions.
In 1990–91, with the help of author Michael Baigent and radar groundscan specialist Tony Wood, he conducted the first radar groundscan of the Qumran plateau, its ruins and, in particular, the top of the various marls, including Caves 4–6 where he felt there was the best chance of finding hidden pockets that previously might not have been visible. Ground-scanning on the marls and below Cave VI did point to several such pockets and seemingly empty areas in the marls adjourning Cave IV.
In 2001–03, his teams joined an expedition led by Hanan Eshel and Magen Broshi and sponsored by John Merrill and the B.A.S. In the course of this expedition, two of his students, Dennis Walker and Ron Dubay, excavated a small building on the eastern edge of the Qumran Cemetery. They found that it contained bones: two secondary burials (and the next year one primary burial was uncovered beneath this). This was an extremely important find, as was the rare zinc sarcophagus found elsewhere in the graveyard, others of his students were involved in uncovering, cleaning, and unearthing. The next year everyone went back to do more work on the enclosure and the bones it contained and to further survey the graveyard at Qumran, which evolved into the first comprehensive map of the Qumran settlement and adjacent cemetery.
In 2004, they had the opportunity to return and investigate the empty areas in the marls of Cave IV, but with little result.
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