A three-hectare mound in the low hill country southwest of Hebron, on the west bank of the Jordan. This fortified settlement has been identified as the biblical town of Kiijath-sepher. Successive occupation layers from the 3rd millennium bc to the Babylonian destruction in 588 bc (with a gap from the end of the Middle Bronze Age, in the later 16th century bc until the second half of the 15th century bc) have helped establish a chronology for the Levant, especially through the detailed analysis of pottery. The town seems to have been prosperous, and stone dye vats indicate that one industry practised here was the manufacture of textiles.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied