The excavation site of Horvat Husham is located in the Judean Lowlands, between the Sorek River basin to the north and Nahal HaElah (the Elah Valley) to the south, adjacent to the 'Brosh' industrial zone west of the city of Beit Shemesh. Salvage excavations were conducted as part of the southward expansion of the industrial zone, during which a large settlement site from the late fourth millennium BCE was uncovered on the eastern slopes of a high hill (370 m above sea level). The ruins of the settlement on the summit (Kh. Kheishum, dating to the Second Temple period) are visible atop the hill and were identified as early as the second half of the 19th century CE (Guérin 1869:27; Conder and Kitchener 1883:118). The existence of an Early Bronze Age site on the slopes of Horvat Husham was first pointed out by Yehuda Dagan (1992) during a survey he conducted in the Judean Lowlands.

The settlement of the early phase of EB IB at Horvat Husham was established on the eastern slopes of the hill. This is in contrast to the two larger sites nearby, Hartuv and Eshtaol, which are located at the foot of the slopes descending to Nahal Sorek. The top of the site commands a 360-degree view of the coastal plain to the west, and the Judean Lowlands and the Hebron Mountains to the north and east. At the foot of the hill flowed the Yarmut Stream, where the groundwater is high, and there are natural springs; one of them is Einot Dekalim. The bedrock on which the settlement was built, from the Adulam Formation (Lower Eocene), is a slope of limestone covered with a layer of nari, creating natural rock steps.