A decade of excavations at Qumran between 1993 and 2004 are summarized. Following the renewed excavations it was concluded that Qumran was not the home of a Jewish desert sect, the Essenes. Two stages of construction dated to the 1st century BCE as a military outpost and to the 1st century CE when it became a center for the production of clay and the manufacture of pottery vessels. The scrolls discovered at Qumran's caves are not connected to the site and were hidden during the Jewish Revolt against Rome.