'En Esur time period Bronze Age
Site
The site of En Esur consists of three elements: Tel Esur, which is the main tell (a mound of accumulated human settlement layers) covering c. 28 dunams, a smaller mound southeast of it, and an open field that surrounds the mounds, which was occupied by a massive, densely built city during the Early Bronze Age. The site is supported by two abundant water springs: 'En Esur or 'En Arubot, east of the tell, which gives the site its name; and a second, unnamed one southwest of the tell.Early Bronze Age
City
Above the Early Chalcolithic settlement, a large walled Early Bronze Age city was discovered. It occupied a space of around 0.65 square kilometers (160 acres) and may have had 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants. This would have made the settlement much larger than Tel Megiddo in Israel and Jericho in the West Bank, and therefore the largest settlement in the Southern Levant during this period, but smaller than more distant cities in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Archaeologist Itai Elad stated that En Esur is double the size of other large settlements known in the area. Researchers excavating the site have said that it demonstrates early processes of urbanization within Canaanite civilization, and that the city would have probably possessed a substantial "administrative mechanism." Haaretz described the site as "vastly bigger than anything thought possible in the Southern Levant 5,000 years ago." Its discoverers have called the city a "megalopolis".The settlement was later abandoned towards the end of Early Bronze Age IB, much like other nearby sites at this time with the end of the Uruk Period, such as Tel Bet She’an and Tel Megiddo, between 3000 and 2800 BCE. However, unlike Tel Bet She’an, Tel Megiddo and other sites in the Levant, there is no evidence of a return to urbanisation in the following Intermediate Bronze Age.
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