The authority said remnants found at the 1.75-acre Ptora site showed that its Bronze Age inhabitants engaged in agriculture, copper production and the making of ceramics and occupied the settlement continuously until about 3,000 BC.

"The excavations reveal to us the daily life of the residents over the course of more than 3,000 years,'' authority excavation director Yaakov Baumgarten said in a statement.

Also unearthed at the site were the remains of a 1st century C.E. farmhouse, apparently abandoned by its Jewish occupants during the bloody revolt against Roman occupation in the year 70 C.E., the authority said.

The building had an open court yard used as a kitchen, two ritual baths as used by pious Jews and a variety of stoneware vessels, it added.