It is the type-site of the Ghassulian culture,[1][2] which flourished in the Southern Levant during the Middle and Late Chalcolithic period (c. 4400 – c. 3500 BC).
[3][failed verification] It is located in the lower eastern Jordan Valley, opposite and a little to the south of Jericho and 5-6 kilometers northeast of the Dead Sea.
[2][6] The site was excavated between 1929 and 1938 by Alexis Mallon and Robert Koeppel of the Jesuit Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem, assisted by prehistorian René Neuville.
The topmost layer of the site had apparently been eroded by nature and by human activity, and might actually have represented several separate occupation phases.
[6][3] The earlier, Late Neolithic settlers, built semi-subterranean, ovoid houses, that contained a single room.
[6] It was concluded that Teleilat el-Ghassul had been the site of several small Chalcolithic villages that subsisted on agriculture and on animal husbandry.
Their houses were rectilinear, built of manually shaped dried mud bricks laid on stone foundations.
[2] They display an increased sophistication over time, in construction techniques, in building size and built fittings - internal and external - and a growing regulation and sequestration of exterior spaces.
It is very accurate and delicate, displaying a rather developed painting technique which likely involved the use of rulers to draw neat straight lines.