A salvage excavation carried out in 2017–2018 by the IAA within the area of the ruined Arab village of Ḥammama, north of Ashkelon, revealed remains and finds dated to the Hellenistic to British Mandate periods. The village of Ḥammama is mentioned in Arab historical sources from at least the 14th century onwards, and it was deserted during the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. The excavated remains attributed to the village proper, however, do not predate the very late Mamluk or early Ottoman period, while most of them represent the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods, including sections of the late 1940s destruction layer with some complete and near complete artefacts.11 Consequently, the majority of Late Islamic-period ceramics, notably Gaza Ware, retrieved in Ḥammama date to the 19th to mid-20th centuries, while only a few examples could be attributed—based on their morphology, pale grey fabric and/or context—to the earlier part of the Ottoman period.
