Since 2003 salvage excavations have been conducted in the southern part of the Rishon Lezion sand dunes, between the Tel Aviv-Ashdod highway and Moshav Gan Soreq. A large village and farmstead were exposed in these excavations.
 
The village, extending across 30 dunams, was almost entirely excavated. In its southern and western parts residential buildings comprising several phases were uncovered. The walls of the buildings, which were preserved to a height of 1 m, were made of sun-dried mudbricks and several of them had fieldstone foundations.  To the east, the settlement’s “industrial zone” was exposed that included a pottery kiln and round pits filled with gray material (refuse pits?). A large cemetery located south of the settlement was surveyed; it was not excavated. The finds included numerous imported pottery vessels and a rich assortment of metal objects and based on them the settlement was founded in the latter part of the Iron Age-beginning of the Persian period (7th-6th centuries BCE) and reached its zenith in the Hellenistic period (end of the 3rd century-middle of the 2nd century BCE). Two installations dating to the Roman period were exposed south of the site.
 
The farmstead was discovered on a hill, c. 0.5 kilometer west of the settlement. It consists of a main building, in the form of a large atrium house (40 x 40 m) with three or four wings (the western wing was not preserved). In each wing there were a number of rooms built of mudbricks. The wings were constructed around a courtyard, in the center of which were two small rooms. The mudbrick remains of another small building were exposed slightly to the east. Five wine presses were uncovered around the buildings. The farmstead, including the wine presses, dates to the Hellenistic period (end of the 3rd century until the middle of the 2nd century BCE).
 
The above settlement and farmstead cultivated the surrounding hamra hills; these tracts were later covered over with sand dunes, probably during the Late Roman period.
 
Three other farm buildings from the same periods were exposed in recent years in the region (two in the Rishon Lezion sand dunes and one in Yavne were excavated by Martin Peilstöker and the Tel Aviv University, Amir Gorzalczany and Diego Barkan). These farms were part of the agricultural hinterland of the nearby urban settlements (e.g. Yavne-Yam and Jaffa). This phenomenon of rural villages and farmsteads dating to the Persian and Hellenistic periods was not previously known to have existed on the southern central coast and we can reasonably assume that other similar sites are still covered by sand dunes and are waiting to be revealed.