A Palestinian site on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, settled from the Early-Middle Bronze Age and occupied again from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods. In the 4th-3rd millennia BC, it was a small walled town which lent its name to a distinctive pottery ware (Khirbet Kerak ware, c 3400) which has been found on many sites throughout the Near East, from Judeidah in the Amuq to Lachish in the south. This highly burnished ware with red or black slip is often incised or ribbed in decoration. Its origins lie up in the southern Caucasus (it was related to Early Transcaucasian wares), from which it was likely carried south by an emigration of the ancestors of the Hittites. The pottery belongs to the EB III phase and has a wide distribution in Syria and Palestine. It is usually thought to have originated in northeast Anatolia and may have been distributed either by emigration or by trade. The town of the mid-3rd millennium BC contains a massive public building, probably a religious structure, that comprises eight circular stone structures all enclosed by a massive outer rectangular wall.