[11] During the Iron Age, the city was razed and rebuilt several times; events which are attributed to the biblical accounts of the conquests by Joshua, King David, Hazael of Aram-Damascus, and the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

The region's abundant water, moderate climate, and fertile soils allow inhabitants to grow a variety of crops in the valley and herd cattle on the slopes of the Menashe Heights and Mount Carmel.

[30] The top of the mound slopes steeply upward from north to south, a feature which led ancient Yokneam's builders to create the terraces on which its structures were built.

[31] Another major route, the hill road that went along the ridge of the Judean and Samarian Mountains, split once it reached the Jezreel Valley, with one continuation heading towards the sea along the foot of the northeastern slopes of the Manasseh Heights and the Carmel, via both Megiddo and Yokneam.

Unexcavated areas of the site may hold more significant remains of this period, as excavations to date have reached bedrock in a very limited location only.

[10] In the first unfortified settlement phase, between 1650 and 1550 BCE, inhabitants buried the dead, particularly children, under the floors of houses in burial jars[35] or tombs, with offerings laid beside the bodies.

[36] A one-meter-deep (3 ft 3 in) layer of dirt fill separates the Middle and Late Bronze Age phases on the site.

[10] In an assemblage from a later period, a beetle stamp was found on a bowl bearing the name of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, who reigned from 1860 to 1814 BCE.

[4] Archaeological finds confirm that the city was devastated during the early years of the Late Bronze Age (1550–1400 BCE), with subsequent rebuilding after a gap in occupation.

A petrographic study of the letters suggests that Yokneam was a city-state, and that one of its kings was called Ba'lu-mehir (mehir is a West Semitic word for "warrior").

[41] In the first, the majority of finds were locally-made Canaanite tools and pottery, characteristic of the Late Bronze Age, although some artifacts of Phoenician and Philistine origin were also found.

It first appears in a list of thirty-one city-states defeated by Joshua and the Israelites,[42] which may explain the destruction of the Late Bronze Age city.

The city's Iron Age fortifications were much stronger than those of nearby Megiddo because of Yokneam's location on the border between the Kingdom of Israel and Phoenicia.

[47] The mound remained deserted until the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great defeated Persia, conquering the region in 333 BCE.

The main settlement between the Hellenistic and Byzantine periods was apparently on the hill south of the mound, on which the first the modern-day town of Yokneam Illit is built.

[53] These artifacts include a cup fragment, a bowl, a krater, a cooking pot, an oil lamp, and amphorae, dating from between 50 BCE and 150 CE.

[56] Eusebius of Caesarea included biblical Yokneam in his Onomasticon in the 3rd century CE, writing that in his own time it was a village called Cammona, "situated in the great plain, six Roman miles north of Legio, on the way to Ptolemais".

Although not mentioned in sources, Yokneam at that time was a well-planned, unfortified city, with a street system and symmetrical buildings constructed on terraces.

It is likely that King Baldwin I of Jerusalem took Yokneam during his campaign against Acre in 1104, and it is unclear whether the monastery of Mount Tabor had previously owned the land.

[8] After Saladin defeated the armies of the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, the Frankish city of Caymont fell into the hands of the Islamic Ayyubid dynasty.

Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, Saladin's secretary, wrote that upon the fall of La Fève, Caymont surrendered like other Frankish localities.

The Treaty of Jaffa, which ended the Third Crusade when it was signed on 2 September 1192, gave Qaymun and its lands to Balian of Ibelin, a prominent Frankish leader.

After the initial Crusader victory at Damietta, the Franks of Acre attempted to attack the Muslims, but were defeated near Caymont by the sultan of Damascus, Al-Mu'azzam Isa.

[23] Pierre Jacotin recorded a castle at Yokneam on a map he made in 1799 during Napoleon Bonaparte's 1798–1801 French campaign in Egypt and Syria.

[28] Charles William Meredith van de Velde described the site in 1854, noting ruins that included the foundations of a Christian church, and several large vaulted caves.

"[29] Claude Reignier Conder described the site in 1878 as a "huge Tell" with the remains of a "little Byzantine chapel" and a "small fort" built by Zahir al-Umar.

[15] In 1931, under the British Mandate, a group of prisoners tasked with removing stones from the mound discovered a diorite vessel from ancient Egypt.

[32] The main excavations at Tel Yokneam took place as part of the "Yoqne'am Regional Project", conducted by the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with the Israel Exploration Society.

[23] In March 2014, Nurit Feig of the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted a salvage excavation at the southeastern foot of the mound, ahead of the residential expansion of Yokneam Moshava.

According to the center, the exhibition tells the story of ancient Yokneam from a historical, cultural, religious, and economic point of view.