Israeli archaeologists today unveiled what they said was a major pottery plant which produced wine storage jars continuously from Roman to Byzantine times.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said that excavations near the town of Gedera, south of Tel Aviv, revealed the factory and an adjacent leisure complex of 20 bathing pools and a room used for board games.
Excavation director Alla Nagorsky told journalists at the site that from the third century AD the plant produced vessels of a type known to historians as "Gaza" jars for an unbroken period of 600 years.
"This kind of a place is not built in an instant," she said. "An engineer worked on it. The site is very designed."