Occupation here runs unbroken for more than five thousand years, from Copper Age pottery fragments through the Argaric Bronze Age to a Roman fishing settlement and, later, an Islamic-period village. Roman Turaniana lived off fishing, salt-curing and trade: excavations have turned up salting pools, ovens, house walls with painted stucco, column shafts and a necropolis. Arab-period geographers knew the settlement as Al-Binyans, a fishing village recorded by the 11th-century writer al-Udri. Excavations continue: a 2021 dig uncovered further fish-salting deposits, confirming how central the sea remained to every era of the site's life.