In the right-of-way for a new railroad line at Yavneh, there were found the ruins of one of the largest Byzantine-era pottery factories in the Middle East. The site contained two clusters of kilns, each cluster containing three kilns surrounded by workshop buildings.

This enormous operation ceased operation on account of a huge earthquake, as attested by aligned fallen walls and columns and a kiln that collapsed while still in operation, filled with dozens of ceramic storage jars. Archaeological dating limits the time of the collapse to the seventh century CE, but could not distinguish between two large documented earthquakes that occurred during this century. By using pollen grains trapped by the collapse, it was possible distinguish between the two candidate earthquakes: September 634 CE and early June 659 CE.

Pollen was extracted from the dust captured on the floor of the kiln during the cooling process of the vessels. The dust was collected only from below in situ whole vessels, and had accumulated for about several days (after the heating process ended and before the collapse). Since the palynological assemblages included spring-blooming plants (such as Olea europaea and Sarcopoterium spinosum) and no common regional autumn bloomers (e.g. Artemisia), it is proposed that the kiln went out of use due to the early June 659 CE earthquake. 

The excavators propose that the reason that the Yavneh workshops were not brought back into operation after this event may be that changes in economic and political conditions following the Muslim conquest made production here no longer economically viable.

In this same area pottery workshops dating to the Persian and early Hellenistic periods also been found, demonstrating the very long-lived nature of ceramic production in this spot: see Yavneh railway line late Persian-early Hellenistic kilns.