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from a debate transcript from 1998, the link leading to Web Archive (so use it sparingly please):

The Enigma of Qumran
The participants in this discussion, all field archaeologists, are Joseph (Yossi) Patrich, associate professor of archaeology at the University of Haifa; Hanan Eshel, senior lecturer in archaeology at Hebrew University and Bar-Ilan University; Yizhar Hirschfeld, lecturer of classical archaeology at Hebrew University; and Jodi Magness, associate professor of classical and Near Eastern archaeology at Tufts University. BAR editor Hershel Shanks moderates the discussion, which was held in Jerusalem last summer...

HIRSCHFELD: In the chart I show some examples. We should compare only the main building of Qumran because the other buildings at the site are mainly workshops and other facilities that were outside the main building. In country houses throughout the Roman Empire, there is usually a clear separation between the dwelling unit and the workshops or industrial area for agricultural production.

We should compare the part in brown on the plan of Qumran, which is the central square structure, with the plans of the other sites. None is exactly like the other. This is not like in churches, where one can put one church above the other and get an identical pattern. What we have are early Roman structures in Judea which have the same components, including a fortified tower and living quarters around a central courtyard. It's a combination of a well-built courtyard house, sometimes with a [columned] peristyle courtyard [as at Khirbet el-Muraq] and a fortified tower. The tower provides protection for the owner of the estate. I believe that this model is relevant for Qumran...

MAGNESS: I saw the pottery from Qumran. I went through it all. Incidentally, in a discussion after a lecture I gave in 1992, at a New York conference, Pauline Donceel-Voûte admitted that there was very little fine ware at Qumran. She also did something that was very misleading. In her lecture at that same conference, she showed a slide that looked like a pile of sherds of fine ware. She simply took every single fragment of fine ware from Qumran and piled it up, and that was the slide. But if you compare the percentage of fine ware from Qumran with the percentage of fine ware from these other sites, there is a striking difference. There is virtually no fine ware at Qumran, and there are no imports at all. Even at Khirbet Mazin, the Dead Sea port just a little south of Qumran, imported amphorae were found there. Qumran doesn't have a single one. At Jericho, just to the north, there is lots of imported material. It wasn't that fine ware wasn't accessible in the area. If people wanted it, they could buy it. It was around in the immediate vicinity. At Qumran, there are no imports at all. There is very little in the way of local fine ware—no terra sigillata, no Jerusalem painted bowls, no painted Nabatean pottery. I believe all the Qumran pottery was made at the site, but that has to be tested with neutron activation analysis.

Hirschfeld (as Patrich notes during the debate) is the only one present who doesn't think that Qumran was an Essene site. Magness goes on at length (with some hyperbole) regarding the pottery all being local product. Shanks points out that Qumran isn't far from Jerusalem. Also, pottery was manufactured near the source of the clay. Clay pots were used to transport olive oil, wine, fish, salt (salt? I think they've got some of that at the Dead Sea), and many other products in the ancient world. The level of the Dead Sea was different when Qumran flourished, as docks have been found.