A tell in the low hill country southwest of Hebron, on the west bank of the Jordan in Palestine. It was a fortified town of biblical times and William F. Albright uncovered successive occupation layers from the 3rd millennium BC (end of Early Bronze Age) to the Babylonian destruction of c 588 BC. It was a small walled town and its finds have helped Albright establish a chronology of the Levant from 2300-588 BC through the detailed analysis of Palestinian pottery. Excavations showed that the Canaanite town of the 14th-13th century had been destroyed by the Israelites toward the end of the 13th century and that the town was finished off by the Babylonians.