When surveyed for the first time, Avner Raban and his team collected flint tools from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. The pottery collected was dated also to the two periods, as well as the Early Bronze Age I-II, Middle Bronze Age II, Late Bronze Age II, all of the Iron Age, the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and the Ottoman periods.[1] Avner Raban identified Tel Shem as the site of a Philistine or other Sea Peoples settlement thanks to the Philistine pottery and figurines found in the site and in collections in Kfar Yehoshua.[2]