During August 2001 a trial excavation was conducted in Kafr Sabt (Permit No. A-3480*; map ref. NIG 2417/7389; OIG 1917/2389), after damage was caused to antiquities while digging a channel for placing cables. The excavation, on behalf of the Antiquities Authority and funded by the Matav Company, was directed by D. Syon, assisted by
Y. Dangor (administration), A. Hajian (surveying) and E. Altmark (metallurgical laboratory).
Two adjacent squares that included part of the cable channel were excavated. Construction from basalt fieldstones, closely set in place next to and atop each other, was damaged inside the channel. Another part of the construction was located in the squares and its northern extension was discerned in the section of the channel. This is apparently a farming terrace. A surface of medium-sized fieldstones was discovered above the terrace in one of the squares.
The ceramic finds included fragments of pottery vessels from two main periods: Early Bronze Age I and the Mamluk–Ottoman periods. Modern metal implements in the lower levels and the location of the potsherds precluded exact dating, but it seems that the farm terrace should be dated to the Mamluk period. Part of a bracelet and a large number of olive pits were discovered alongside the pottery fragments from the Mamluk period. A flint tool (Canaanean blade) and a fairly large quantity of flint flakes and cores, indicative of a flint-tool industry, were dated to the Early Bronze Age. Several pottery fragments from the Middle Bronze Age, as well as the Roman and Byzantine periods, were discovered as well.
Nine coins, detailed in the following table, were found in the excavation.
Ruler |
Date |
Quantity |
IAA No. |
Late Roman(?) |
Fourth century CE |
1 |
|
Abbasid |
Eighth century CE |
1 |
102667 |
Abbasid(?) |
Eighth–ninth centuries CE |
1 |
|
Al-Nasir Hassan or Al-Mansur Muhammad |
1360-1363 |
1 |
102671 |
Al-Nasir Muhammad |
1496-1498 CE |
1 |
102669 |
Mamluk |
Fourteenth–fifteenth ceturies CE |
3 |
102670, 102672, 102673 |
Ottoman |
Sixteenth–seventeenth centuries CE |
1 |
102668 |