For over five millennia, Akko served as a major urban and maritime center located  onthe Mediterranean’s Levantine coast. The tell, situated east of the modern city of Akko, dominated the Plain of Akko and was inhabited from the Early Bronze Age into the Hellenistic period (ca. 3000 – 100 BCE). By the middle of the Hellenistic period, however, settlement had shifted from the mound towards the natural Bay of Akko, under what is now the UNESCO World Heritage site of Old Acre and the adjacent modern city. Today, Tel Akko is a municipal park.

The first series of excavations under the direction of Moshe Dothan (1973 – 1989), which remain largely unpublished, uncovered an impressive Canaanite city fortified by massive ramparts and a Phoenician town that served as an important regional industrial center.

Renewed excavations on Tel Akko commenced in 2010 under the co-direction of Ann E. Killebrew (Pennsylvania State University) and Michal Artzy (University of Haifa). The 2010 – 2019 project incorporates an integrated, ‘total archaeology’ approach to the region’s heritage, past and present. The goals included:

• An intensive survey of the mound and documentation of previous unpublished excavations conducted by Dothan.

• The investigation of Bronze and Iron Age Akko and its role as the major Canaanite and Phoenician urban center in the Plain of Akko.

• Investigating the development of Akko/Ptolemais and the impact of Neo-Assyrian, Persian and Hellenistic empires during the first millennium BCE..

• The development of new documentation technologies

• Establishment of a state-of-the-art field school to train future archaeologists, which incorporated excavation, survey, GIS, on-site conservation, underwater archaeology, and community outreach.