This article reports on the 2012 and 2016 field seasons at the Nabataean-Roman hilltop town of Avdat in the central Negev highlands of Israel. The fieldwork, being carried out as part of the Avdat in Late Antiquity Project, is concerned with a multi-roomed cave and stone-built compound along the southern slope of the town, which appears to have been inhabited by the town's monastic community during late antiquity. The various finds in the compound, including numerous red-painted dipinti and unusually well-preserved organic remains, provide evidence of the social and economic agency of the monks and draw attention to the understudied phenomenon of “urban monasticism” in late antique Palestine. In addition, through the combined use of radiocarbon and archaeoseismological data, important new questions are raised about the Byzantine-Early Islamic transition and the duration of settlement at Avdat.

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Three seasons of archaeological fieldwork by the Avdat in Late Antiquity Project have yielded new evidence of intensive Early Islamic activity in the late antique town of Avdat in Israel's Negev Highlands. This evidence has important implications for understanding the fate of such towns in the region during the Byzantine–Islamic transition.

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