• from Moshe Fischer in Stern et al (2008)

Yavne-Yam (Iamnia-on-the-Sea; Khirbet edh-Dherbeh) is located on the Mediterranean coast, roughly midway between Jaffa and Ashdod, along a natural anchorage. In the nineteenth century the site was visited by G. Rey (1859), V. Guérin (1863), F. G. D. Bedford (1863), C. Warren (1867), C. R. Conder and H. H. Kitchener (1875), and L. C. Clermont-Ganneau (1874 and 1881). V. Guérin was the first to identify the site with the port of Iamneia, which he referred to as Maiumas Iamniae, though such a name does not occur in ancient sources. The site is mentioned in various sources, such as the el-Amarna letters (fourteenth century BCE), where it is called muhazi (harbor); Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Arabic sources call it “the harbor of Iamnia” (Yavneh), such as Iamniton limen (Ptolemy, Geography V, 16, 2), mahouza d’Yamnin (Vita Petri Iberi 123), maoza d’Yamnias (Johannes Rufus, Plerophoriae 76), mao(u)za Iamnias (ACO III: 38, 51, 146–147), Mahuz Yubna (al-Muqaddasi, in 985), or mahuz e-tani (Idrisi, twelfth century). As was common along the southern Mediterranean coast of Israel in antiquity, two sites bore the name Yavneh: the harbor site, and inland Yavneh, which is identified with Tel Yavneh, about 8 km southeast of the harbor. The first-century CE Roman writer Pliny the Elder speaks explicitly of Iamneae duae, altera intus (“the two towns of Iamneia, one of them inland”), which the geographer Ptolemy alludes to as well. In the Medeba map (mid-sixth century CE), inland Yavneh is denominated “Jabneel which is also Iamneia,” making it clear that Iamneia means Yavneh. In late medieval maps, Yavneh-Yam is alternatively called Portus Jude, Iamneia quondam Portus Iudeorum, or Iamneia Iudeorum portus, thus identifying Yavneh-Yam as the harbor of Jewish inland Yavneh. In recent times the site was called Minet Rubin (the Harbor of Reuben), reflecting the Muslim tradition identifying the area with the burial place of the biblical Reuben.

• from Moshe Fischer in Stern et al (2008)

A. Reifenberg’s (1950) first aerial photographs of the site were followed by M. Dothan’s (1952) archaeological survey. The first archaeological excavations at Yavneh-Yam were carried out by J. Kaplan in 1966–1969 in the eastern ramparts and the monumental “triple gate,” which he attributed to the Middle Bronze Age IIA. Kaplan assumed that the enclosure was a square, 800 by 800 m, the western section of which had been eroded by the sea; but this has been disproved by recent underwater surveys. Several salvage excavations carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority between 1968 and 1992 within the area of the site and its vicinity, including underwater surveys, have revealed remains from the Neolithic period to the Early Islamic period. Monumental structures from the Byzantine period, among which was an elaborate mosaic pavement, were unearthed between areas A and B. Many of these finds, including those of the Tel Aviv University excavations, are on display in the museum at Kibbutz Palmahim. Five seasons of excavations were conducted in 1992–1999 by the Yavneh-Yam Archaeological Project, headed by M. Fischer, on behalf of the Department of Classics and the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University