The site is characterised by a rocky coastline, sandy beaches and mangroves, backed inland by lowland plains supporting an arid savanna landscape with low, woody vegetation.

Opone is described therein as a busy port city, strategically located on the trade route that spanned the length of the Indian Ocean's rim.

As early as 50 CE, the area was well known as a center for the cinnamon trade, along with the barter of cloves and other spices, ivory, exotic animal skins and incense.

In the 1970s, a Somali-British archaeological expedition in Hafun and other parts of northern Somalia, led by Neville Chittick, recovered numerous examples of historical artefacts and structures, including ancient coins, Roman pottery, drystone buildings, cairns, masjids, walled enclosures, standing stones and platform monuments.

[2] A later expedition in Hafun, led by an archaeological team with the University of Michigan, excavated Ancient Egyptian, Roman and Persian Gulf pottery.

[3] Archaeological excavations at the western Hafun site have yielded ceramics from ancient kingdoms in the Nile Valley, Near East, Persia and Mesopotamia, as well as some sherds of possible derivation from the Indian subcontinent.