The second season of excavations in Compound C, in Beer Sheva, was conducted in the summer of 2005, within the framework of the study excavation of the Archaeology Division of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The excavation, in cooperation with the Antiquities Authority, was directed by Peter Fabian and Yitzhak Gil’ad. The site of Compound C, which is located next to the municipal market place in the heart of Beer Sheva, was damaged as a result of intensive modern development. Most of the area of the compound was covered with asphalt and is today used as a parking lot.
 
The excavation during the summer of 2005 in Area B confirms the observation from the latter part of the previous season that a large building of a public nature stood there during the Iron Age 2 (8th-7th centuries BCE). The finds from this period in Areas A and B were mostly recovered from inside deposits characterizing mudbrick buildings. It is important to note that this material was discovered in each room where artifacts of the Iron Age were discovered. It was also ascertained that the Iron Age strata begin to appear at a depth of 20-30 centimeters below the surface, at the base of the remains from the Late Roman period, and reach a depth of c. 2.5 m in which different occupation phases are clearly apparent. We have still not reached the bottom of the Iron Age level in Areas A and B. In Area A remains of a hypocaust were also found that may possibly date to the Late Roman period.
 
For the first time this season part of a building dating to the Iron Age 2 was uncovered in Area C. It seems that the walls of the Byzantine and Late Roman periods, which were excavated during the previous season, were built directly above the Iron Age 2 and Chalcolithic period strata. No architectural connection was found between the Iron Age building discovered in Area C, in the southwestern part of the excavation, and the building from this period that is located in Areas A and B to the east. Below the Roman-Byzantine complex and next to the Iron Age strata is a level replete with flint implements dating to the Chalcolithic period, indicating that flint knappers worked there. The Chalcolithic stratum, which was first excavated in this part of the site last season, is a relatively thin layer and below it is the bedrock consisting of a hard reddish layer containing concentrations of chalk.