In 1996, the progress of work on the Peace Canal and the developments accompanying it necessitated the implementation of a three-year salvage programme at the outer limits of the concession area. The first season's work took place in spring 1997 in the sector of the settlement to the south-west of the fortress and in the sector of the cemeteries to the south-east. Excavations at the settlement revealed 14 buildings, mostly two-storey dwellings dated to the Hellenistic period, and a building of religious nature dated, in its later phase of use, to the early Roman period. The cemeteries sector has so far yielded some 130 tombs divisible into 6 categories. A taphonomic analysis of the bones found in certain tombs and a palaeodemographic study have provided initial information about the population of the cemeteries during the Ptolemaic period.