During February 2007, a trial excavation was conducted at the site of Rujum Zaki, next to Qibbuz Geshur in the southern Golan Heights (Permit No. A-4963*; map ref. NIG 267230/746025; OIG 217230/246025), in the wake of installing a cellular telephone antenna. The excavation, undertaken on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and underwritten by the Mirs Communication Company, Ltd., was directed by O. Zingboym, with the assistance of Y. Ya‘aqoby (administration) and laborers from Tiberias.
The site of Rujum Zaki is mentioned in the 1880s survey of Schumacher (The Jaulan, London, 1888, p. 257 [Tell Zakiteh]). It was examined by the emergency survey team, C. Epstein and S. Guttman, in the beginning of the 1970s (Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights, the 1968 Archaeological Survey, Jerusalem, 1972, p. 286), as well as by a team from the Israel Survey in the 1990s (License G-108/1993). Several cisterns, a well and parts of an olive press were found in the surveys and the collected potsherds dated to the Early and Late Roman, Byzantine, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, as well as the modern era.
The excavation was carried out in the eastern part of the site—a rocky area covered with basalt. One square (4 × 5 m) was opened, revealing a layer of stones and a few fragments of pottery vessels. After removing the layer of stones, bedrock was exposed and upon it were pottery vessels that dated from the Roman (third–fifth centuries CE) until the Mamluk (thirteenth–fourteenth centuries CE) periods.
It is apparent that the excavation area is located beyond and east of the settlement area. The survey team that inspected the site in the 1990s found the remains of an olive press some 40 m southeast of the excavation. Other agricultural installations, which are usually found close to settlements of these periods in the Golan, probably occur in the adjacent area.