Excavations at Tell Um Hammad, 1984

Tell Um Hammad is not a tell in the normal sense: it is, rather, an area over which a series of settlements was built from the fourth millennium onwards. These were not always built on the same spot and the site is therefore stratified horizontally as much as vertically. Depth of occupational debris is often shallow. The whole area is badly eroded and deflated. Recent agricultural development has disturbed or almost completely removed whole sectors of Tell Um Hammad. This is the negative reality.