[8] Kabri is named for the abundance of its perennial springs the presence of which has led to the site's occupation and use as a water source from the Pottery Neolithic (PN) period (6,400–4,500 BCE) to the present day.

[9] Located in the Western Upper Galilee, the site was at the height of its power in the Middle Bronze, controlling much of the surrounding region.

Kabri declined as a local power at the end of the Middle Bronze, but the site continued to be occupied at times, on a much reduced level, up until the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

[b] Aharon Kempinski hypothesised that Kabri might have been the same city as Rehov, referred to in the Execration Texts, an Ancient Egyptian list of enemy polities.

[19] The site is mentioned in the 3rd century Mosaic of Rehob, as marking one of the northernmost bounds of Jewish resettlement after their return from Babylonian exile.

It is less than 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the sea, and the Ga'aton River is nearby to the south, with the closest major city being Nahariyya to the west.

[27] The area was fortified, and an additional 25 hectares (250,000 m2) were enclosed within a large glacis, a type of earthwork fortification that was 50 metres (160 ft) wide with a stone core and that encircled the tell as it appears today.

[32] At the peak of its power, Kabri may have controlled a domain that stretched from Mount Carmel in the south to the Sulam range in the north, with as many as 31 vassal sites and 30,000 subjects.

[33] Kempinski hypothesised that Kabri might be the Bronze Age settlement of Rehov, a polity mentioned in the Execration Texts and the biblical Book of Joshua.

[38] Some time during the Early Roman period, a Jewish settlement is mentioned, named Kabrita,[5] located east of the tell in the area that was occupied by the later Arab village.

[39] Et-Tell does appear in the later Palestine Exploration Fund map of 1880,[39] and is talked about by Victor Guérin in his travelogue of the area, published that same year, which described all three villages.

[44] In the Hellenistic period, an aqueduct was constructed at Kabri,[45] and another was built during the governorship of Jezzar Pasha, the Ottoman ruler of Akko who also ruled the Eyalet of Sidon (1775-1804).

Tel Kabri has been a subject of archaeological study since 1957, following the discovery of Late Neolithic vessels at the site in 1956 by members of the kibbutz (collective settlement).

[50] The tell is located on the grounds of the kibbutz, and contains the remains of the Canaanite city from the Middle Bronze period and the partially excavated later Iron Age citadel.

[53] The entire site is cut across by a British Mandate period (1920–1948) road that originally led from the coastal city of Nahariyya to the moshav of Me'ona.

[54] Most of the tell was also covered over with a metre of sterile top-soil (containing no archaeological remains) laid down for the purpose of farming by the kibbutz between Kempinski's excavations ending in 1993 and the beginning of the ongoing expedition in 2005.

According to Tel Kabri Archaeological Project co-Director Assaf Yasur-Landau: "The city's preservation enables us to get a complete picture of political and social life in the Canaanite period.

This began when the archaeological remains of the tell were first discovered in the 1950s after kibbutzniks started coming across Neolithic artefacts near the local spring of Ein Giah.

In 1956, on behalf of IDAM, the forerunner of today's Israel Antiquities Authority, David Alon and Daniel Rosolio conducted a survey in the area where the Neolithic artefacts had first been found earlier in the same year.

In 1961, public works by the national water company revealed Bronze Age architectural remains in the form of a palace floor.

[63] From 1975 to 1976, salvage excavations were carried out by Prausnitz representing the IDAM, Kempinski of Tel Aviv University (TAU), and Ruth Amiran of the Israel Museum, to explore the area where the MB II tombs had been found, the lower city, the earthen rampart, and the Neolithic layers of the site.

The portion of the palace initially excavated included a 10 by 10 metres (33 by 33 ft) hall, with a Minoan-style decorated plaster floor.

[95] In 2004, the Israeli telecommunications company, Cellcom, was laying down new telephone cable near Area E, and Smithline was asked to conduct a salvage excavation before the work started.

[96] With these results, Yasur-Landau approached his former Megiddo Expedition colleague, Prof. Eric H. Cline of The George Washington University, the following year and asked whether he would like to co-direct new excavations at Tel Kabri.

[101]During the course of the season, additional palatial architecture was uncovered, and the palace was found to be twice as large as previously thought by Kempinski, thus confirming the results of the 2003 soundings by Yasur-Landau and Makovsky.

[65] The team also found that in the time between the end of Kempinski's excavations and the start of the new expedition, there had been significant damage done to the site by the elements.

[110] They managed to get a clearer picture of the entire MB palatial area up to the 1600s BCE destruction, and recovered further wall plaster fragments.

[28] The main finds of the 2011 season included an orthostat building close to the palace, further pieces of painted plaster,[116] and a scarab of the Second Intermediate Period.

To speed up the process of uncovering the vessels in the wine cellar, for part of the time, the team adopted the atypical practice of working in morning and afternoon shifts of 05:00 to 12:00 and 13:00 to 19:00, respectively,[119] almost exclusively in Area D-West.

In 2017 a salvage excavation was conducted at a site 200 meters south of Tel Kabri in response for planned agricultural activity.