[duxup]

Yeah the scale of trade always seems to surprise everyone. It's hard for me often to understand how folks draw the archaeological lines here.

Materials could have been traded and the scrolls written near the Dead Sea ... or even folks from the Dead Sea traveled to Jerusalem, used local materials and made some scrolls, and traveled back.

[partialrecall]

I think it's instructive to consider bronze. To make bronze you need copper, which is very common, and tin, which isn't. Tin was only mined in a small handful of locations around the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_in_ancie...

So from that, it's clear to see that extensive trading networks were necessary for these civilizations, not just for luxuries like exotic herbs and spices, but their basic industrial needs.

[DiffEq]

Well not exactly true; you can use Arsenic instead of Tin and there is evidence that they certainly did use it; I am not sure of the breakdown of ancient tin-Bronze vs arsenic Bronze in use. In any case your point still stands as we also know there was tin bronze in use and likely much of it may have come from the British isles.

[cwkoss]

Would arsenic bronze have any added toxic effects?

[partialrecall]

More to the people producing it than using it. But metallurgy and mining must have been awfully dangerous industries to be in back then regardless of the arsenic.

[cwkoss]

I was thinking more along the lines of "added weapon poison damage", ex. https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/99646/can-...

Seems that lethal dose for arsenic is likely too high to be transmitted by even a pure arsenic trioxide blade, unless it was manufactured with the intent of leaving bits inside the wound, like maybe a blade a rough brittle surface to leave grit. Even so, would have to introduce ~50+mgs worth, which sees like a tall order.

Seems arsenic bronze is even less toxic, so probably not poisoning anyone. I wonder if the minor local toxicity of arsenic blade cuts would reduce the chance of the wound causing sepsis.

[partialrecall]

Perhaps an arsenic bronze arrow head broken off inside of somebody could poison them slowly over time.

[jecxjo]

You basically have to look at the availability and cost of transport of the goods. Salt was abundant in the Dead Sea area so the need to import salt would have been pretty low.

As for the movement of writers, or the scrolls post creation, you'd look at where scripts were generated and where they sourced their materials. Just speculating, as I haven't read the background material on this new discovery, but it would make sense that the monasteries in Jerusalem would have a reproducible sourcing process since they would be generating manuscripts often. Same would go for monasteries around the Dead Sea.