Two squares were opened c. 6.5 m apart. Fourteen pit graves (length 1.5–3.0 m, width c. 0.5 m; Figs. 1, 2) were discovered. Some of the tombs, hewn in the soft chalk bedrock and oriented east–west, were covered with a row of limestone fieldstones, partially roughly hewn (Figs. 2, 3). Although all the graves were aligned in a uniform direction, they were dug in disarray; some were adjacent to each other and others were situated partly on top of each other. The exposed human bones were not buried, but rather scattered between the covering stones of the tombs and their surroundings. A few potsherds from the Byzantine and Abbasid periods were found in the alluvium soil (thickness 0.5–0.9 m) that covered the tombs.
 
The findings from the excavation indicate that the northwestern slope of Ramat Yishay served as the settlement’s cemetery, which extended across the hill to the north and east. The direction of the graves probably indicates Muslim burials, in which the head of the deceased is customarily placed in the west so that the face could be turned southward, toward Mecca. It seems that the state of the cemetery—with bones outside of tombs, which are partly built one atop the other—attests to the very long period of use. Based on the ceramic finds, the cemetery should be attributed to the Abbasid period (eighth–tenth centuries CE).