Salvage excavations along Naḥal ‘Ashan, to the north of Be’er Sheva‘, unearthed several farmhouses that formed part of the rural hinterland of the city. The farmhouses, dating from the late Byzantine to the Abbasid period, shared a uniform building technique that exploited the local loess soil for producing mud bricks and reused building materials from earlier Christian edifices. The finds included mainly locally made pottery, glass and stone vessels. This article offers a discussion of the settlement patterns, economy and demography of the region during the Byzantine–Early Islamic transition period.