ABSTRACT
Described as “one of the most prominent coastal cities in Canaan” (Dothan, ABD 1992: 50), the ruins of ancient Acco (also spelled “Akko”) are located some eight miles north of the modern city of Haifa. The Arabic name of the site is Tell el-Fukhar (“ruin of potsherds”). During much of its long history, Acco was the largest city in the area – between thirty and fifty acres (Dothan, NEAEHL 1993, 1: 17). Rising some 115 feet above sea level, the tell provides a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Today’s visitors can easily miss this tell because the modern city of Acco is located west of the mound and runs up to the sea itself (the ancient tell is about half a mile from the coast). Furthermore, the Old City of Acco,
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Nevertheless, from around 2000 BCE down to Ottoman times (sixteenth-early twentieth centuries CE) the tell was occupied. However, much of the occupational details, especially from the Hellenistic period onwards, have been lost to robbery, cultivation, and perhaps natural erosion when the sea level was higher than it is today.
