Stratum I is characterized by black soil (L108; thickness c. 0.3 m). The stratum was thicker in several places, where it probably covered depressions in Stratum II. It contained pottery sherds from the Roman and Byzantine periods. It seems that this area was not built up during those periods.
 
Stratum II comprised light colored soil (L109; thickness c. 0.5 m) with pottery dating to the Late Bronze and Iron Age. Two burnt bricks (L110) and evidence of a fire were discovered in the section of Sq A. This stratum was probably created when the tell was cleaned and made level prior to construction in the Roman period. The ceramic finds included a bowl (Fig. 4:1) and cooking pots (Fig. 4:5, 7, 8) dating from the Iron Age, a body fragment of a collar-rim jar of the early Iron Age (Israelite settlement) and an Early Bronze Age bowl (Fig. 4:4). Although the bowl was ex situ, it is indicative of an Early Bronze Age settlement on the tell.
 
Stratum III. Light colored soil, similar to that revealed in Stratum II, was exposed in all three squares. Floors (L111–L113; Fig. 5) made of fieldstones or coarsely dressed stones, some of which were thin slabs. A single course of a poorly preserved mud-brick wall (L114), constructed of gray bricks (c. 0.25 × 0.25 m), was exposed in Sq C. The wall was apparently aligned in an east–west direction. The ceramic finds included bowls (Fig. 4:2, 3), a krater (Fig. 4:6), cooking pots (Fig. 4:9–11), jars (Fig. 4:12–16) and a pithos (Fig. 4:17) dating from the MB II; several vessels can be definitely attributed to the end of the MB IIA. The type of mud-bricks, the floors and the pottery assemblage date the stratum to the late phases of the MB IIA and perhaps to the beginning of the MB IIB, corresponding to Stratum E in Porath and Paley’s excavations (E. Marcus, personal communication). As seen in the section in Sq A, the MB IIA settlement was founded on the bedrock.
 
This was the first excavation on the southern slope of Tel Hefer, and it indicated that the settlement on the tell reached its greatest extent during the MB IIA, when it covered the southern slope. In later periods, the size of the settlement diminished and the southern slope was left uninhabited.