TYPICALPHILISTINEbowl found on floor of the Philistine fortress,eleventhcenturyb.c. KRATER (bowl) highly burnished and decorated with black bandsand (right) elegantburnishedjuglet (Iron Age II). Ashdod continued scale. A corner of a fortress belonging to the Philistine period was uncovered. The walls (1.25 m. wide) of this rectangular mud-brick building are preserved to a height of up to two meters ; the flat bricks were laid with mortar. A section of what was probably the entrance gate was uncovered in the east wall. Most of the pottery found in the fortress dates from the eleventh century b.c. Unfortunately much of the building, which stands on the edge of area A, was destroyed in modern times, long after its first destruction in the early tenth century b.c. The evidence gathered from excavation in area H (1965) corroborates the stratigraphy of area A. There are three Philistine strata with different types of structures and traces of the brick city wall, almost completely eroded. 182 The most significant remains belong to the uppermost level; they include a circular or apsidal structure within rectangular walls. We can now tentatively reconstruct the historical background of the Philistine period on the acropolis. In the twelfth century the Philistines constructed their buildings on a ruined site of Iron Age I. However, it was only at the beginning of the eleventh century that a fortress was built. The archaeological evidence is thus in accordancewith biblical sources: the Philistines reached the peak of their power in the first half of the eleventh century, that is, before Saul's ascent. It may perhaps be conjectured that the destruction of the fortress was the result of one of David's raids on the Philistines. A large roughly circular pit filled with discarded Philistine pottery was cleared in area C (outside the