Kitchener of the Palestine Exploration Fund surmised that Maresha should be identified with Khurbet Mar'ash, a ruin 3⁄4 mile south of Beit Jibrin, based on a phonetic similarity of their names.

Following these events, Edomites who had lived east and south of the Dead Sea migrated to the area and Maresha emerged as a major Idumean city.

During the period of Persian rule, Phoenician colonies were encouraged to spread out along the coastal regions of Palestine and in the adjacent hill country of Judea, whence their early settlement in Maresha took its rise.

Thus Maresha reached its zenith, developing as a Hellenistic city encompassing a multitude of Greek and oriental cultures including Sidonians and Nabataeans.

With the advent of Hellenisation, the settlement pattern changed, as most everywhere in the region, and the city expanded far beyond the constraints of the fortified, raised tell or mound of Iron Age Maresha.

[20][15] In 63 BCE, as part of the arrangements made by Pompey in the region, Maresha, along with all of Edom, was separated from the Jewish kingdom and returned to Idumea.

[21] Maresha was finally destroyed in 40 BCE by the Parthians as part of the power struggle between Antigonus of the Hasmoneans who had sought their aid and Herod, who was a son of the converted Antipater the Idumaean and was being supported by the Romans.

[22] If indeed neither the upper nor the lower city were reinhabited at least in part, the one remaining possibility mentioned by Amos Cloner is that the name of Maresha was transferred to the nearby hill of Bet Guvrin, which could have been used as the main settlement of the district for several decades, from the end of the second century BCE until its destruction by the Parthians.

[22] A first-century BCE coin, presumed to have been minted by the citizens of Maresha, was discovered during excavations at Bet Guvrin, which can be interpreted as an argument in favour of this suggestion.

[24] From 2014 excavation and publication work continued on behalf of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Located some 400 meters above sea level, the bedrock is soft chalk, lending itself to the hewing of caves which were used as quarries, cisterns, tombs, animal mangers, olive presses and dovecots (columbaria).

Furthermore, the Archaeological Seminars Institute, under the license of the Israel Antiquities Authority, conducts excavations of Maresha's many quarried systems, and invites visitors to participate.