The Dead Sea Scrolls -- Edmund Wilson -- c. 1969

 Qumrân: west bank; northwest bank of the Dead Sea.

• 700 BC: very ancient Israeli wall; no relationship to anything that came later

• 200 BC: next construction

Coins:

136 BC: Antiochus VII

37 BC: the Hasmonean period; 143 BC - 37 BC. Link here. Increasing autonomy for Judea (from Egypt).

period of Jewish independence and extends to the accession of Herod the Great

the next group begins with the reign of his son, Herod Archelaus, 4 BC - 6 AD

Then an interval when the building was left unoccupied.

Another big gap between 68 and 132 AD.

Thirteen coins that belong to the period of Bar-Kochba's final revolt against the Romans in 132 - 135 AD.

Many coins from the reigns of the late Jewish kings, John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus: probable that the monastery was built in the reign of the former (136 - 106 BC) and occupied during the latter (104 - 78 BC).

Evidence of eearthquake damage.

• Josephus: occurred during the seventh year of the reign of Herod the Great, not long before the Battle of Actium -- the spring of 31 BC -- Judea was shaken by an earthquake in which 30,000 people were killed.

The building would not have been reoccupied -- as the coins of Archelaus show -- till somewhere near the beginning of the Christian era.

Why did the community wait thirty years before moving back into the monastery?

Romans finally got the Essenes, either killed them or caused them to flee.

In the second year of the first Jewish revolt -- 67 - 68 AD when the second sequence of coins ends -- the building must have been destroyed.

After the Roman operations of 67 AD -- Josephus - the Tenth Legion was encamped at Caesarea on the Mediterranean, and in June of the following year, Vespasian paid a visit to Jericho and the Dead Sea.

The Romans must have remained at Qumrân at least well into the reign of Titus -- sometime after 79 AD as is shown by three coins stamped Judæa Capta. 

Monastery provided Romans a location to watch the area north of the Death Sea, particularly Masada.

Masada had been captured in 66 AD by the Jews, who had slaughtered the Roman garrison and who succeeded in holding it until April, 73 AD, three years after the fall of Jerusalem.

Chronology, link here: