The Tell el-Hesi site comprises a 25-acre walled city from the Early Bronze III period. It is located on the southeastern edge of the Mediterranean coastal plain, 26 km northeast of Gaza in Israel. Tell el-Hesi was the first Palestinian site at which the principles of ceramic chronology and of stratigraphic excavation were applied and at which the relationship between pottery and stratigraphy was shown to be significant. In 1890 W.M. Flinders Petrie excavated at Hesi and produced a general picture of its occupational history. In 1891-92, F.J. Bliss excavated stratigraphically through each successive level of the mound and identified eleven occupational levels which he grouped into eight strata or "cities".

In 1970, The Joint Archaeological Expedition to Tell el-Hesi, sponsored by the American Schools of Oriental Research and a consortium of educational institutions, entered the site with the objectives of investigating in greater detail and with more refined methods the stratigraphic divisions identified by Petrie and Bliss. This book appears as the second volume in the Joint Expedition's series of final publications regarding their field experience and findings. The presence of Strata I and II, the modern military trenching, and the Muslim cemetery, combined to force the Joint Expedition to an important archaeological decision. Both strata belong to the modern period and fall into the vaguely defined category of 'historical archaeology'. Strata of this kind are frequently disregarded in the excavation and reporting of Near Eastern sites. However, the decision was made to excavate these strata with the same detail as the more ancient levels of the mound.

This decision launched a pioneering effort in the archaeology of the Palestine area, and necessitated the development of new excavation and recording techniques. The aim of this report is to present in an organized form all the data on Strata I and II gathered by the expedition; to analyze this data; to offer cultural conclusions; and to compare the results in a preliminary way with the data from other sites and with the published work of other anthropologists.