The renewed excavations at Qubur al-Walaydah focus on a village site on the periphery of the Philistine settlement. One of the aims is to define the material culture in a Philistine village against the background of research in urban centers of the Philistines conducted in the last decades.
Another goal is the study of a rural site in a transitional region. These transitions include the intersection between settlement and nomadism, dryfarming and desert economies, and the interactions between coastal cultures and those in the eastern hillcountry, including the Judean mountains. The paper will present the first results of two seasons of fieldwork at the site and survey activity in the area.