There was convincing historical and archaeological evidence for this scenario and it was, for awhile, universally accepted. Over the years, however, new scenarios would be advanced by other scholars. King Herod had distributed estates to relatives and friends and number of manor houses strikingly similar to Qumran have been excavated in Judea. He himself has excavated one near Caesarea. They may have lived on the fringe of the manor house and provided cheap labor.
Nothing grows there.
There were date palms, expensive balsam, asphalt from the Dead Sea. The suggestion by Broshi and Hanan Eshel, who excavated outside the Qumran ruins in 1996, that most of the population lived around a motherhouse in tents and caves is unsubstantiated by their finds. Permanent tent encampments in the desert leave clear signs detectable even after millenia, like cleared areas and circles of stones to hold the tents. There are no such signs at Qumran. The potsherds they found were probably left by shepherds.