The survey and excavations conducted in recent years have shown that the site had been inhabited during the Bronze and Iron Ages, as well as the Persian, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods. Since at least the early 13th century CEal-Hamawi quoted in le Strange, 1890, p.381 the mound was the location of the Arab village of Abil al-Qamh, depopulated in 1948. However, the lower mound was not occupied after the Iron Age I (late 11th/early 10th centuries BCE), when occupation seems to have concentrated on the upper mound.
