Cave 8 is more evocatively known as the “ Cave of Horror,” after the remains of 40 adults and children were found there during excavations in the early 1960s. The scroll fragments were found in Cave 8 in the wadi, or canyon, of Nahal Hever during excavations conducted in late 2019 and early 2020. So it helps us a lot,” says Eitan Klein, deputy director of the theft-prevention unit, noting that more than 50 percent of the caves documented so far do not contain any archaeological material. “We know exactly where there is a chance to find, and where the looters can dig but will not find anything. While that will benefit all archaeologists who work in the region, it also will enable the IAA theft-prevention unit to zero in on sites that may be particularly vulnerable to looting. The ultimate goal of the project is to catalog the entirety of the caves that pock the cliffs of the Judean desert and document which ones contain archaeological material. While international law generally forbids archaeological excavation in occupied territories, the Israeli government maintains it is within its right to conduct emergency salvage operations when the fate of cultural heritage is at risk. The ongoing project, which was launched in October 2017, has already surveyed some 600 caves in a 45-mile stretch of desert cliffs in a region that encompasses both Israel and Area C of the occupied West Bank, where Israel maintains military and civil control. Read more about the modern hunt for ancient biblical texts. We finally decided to preempt the thieves before are removed from the ground and the caves,” said Amir Ganor, head of the IAA’s theft-prevention unit, in a video released with the press announcement. “For years, we chased after antiquities looters. In many instances, archaeologists have had to rappel hundreds of feet down sheer cliff faces and dig through piles of bird and bat guano to uncover artifacts that may be the target of similarly equipped looters in the sparsely populated, arid region along the western shore of the Dead Sea. The first Dead Sea Scroll fragments found in more than a half-century, and what is possibly the world’s oldest intact basket, were among the discoveries made during a multi-year effort to thwart looting in remote caves across the Judean Desert, the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) has announced.
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