The Dead Sea Scrolls are perhaps the best known ancient documents discovered in the twentieth century. Over the past fifty years, the scrolls have been painstakingly cleaned, pieced together, and partially or fully published. The origin of the scrolls, however, has remained an enigma, as have the people who allegedly wrote these scrolls. In light of this situation, the present authors decided to trace the provenance of the pottery of Qumran, including the scroll jars in which the scrolls were apparently found. The word" apparently" is intentional, because no scroll has ever been removed from a jar by an archaeologist.

As the title of this paper suggests, neutron activation analysis (NAA) is able to shed light on the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls by tracing the pottery which the Essenes allegedly used and, specifically, the storage jars used to ship or hide manuscripts which were uncovered in the Qumran caves.