 The tell was first surveyed in the 1920s first by Eleazar Sukenik and then later by William Foxwell Albright.In 1933, Na'im Makhouly, a Christian Palestinian from Nazareth, who was an inspector for the Mandate Department of Antiquities at the time of the construction of the Samak-Tiberias highway that cut across the tell, conducted a salvage excavation.During the 1940s, parts of the tell were excavated by Benjamin Mazar, Michael Avi-Yonah, Moshe Sheteklis, and Emanuel Dunayevsky.