The excavation square (Figs. 2, 3) was opened in a pile of large limestone blocks (L104) discovered in preliminary inspections; some of the blocks were natural fieldstones and others partly dressed. The pile was cut into at both ends by Ottoman-period refuse pits (L102, L103). The pits yielded a large quantity of pottery dating from the Mamluk to the Ottoman periods. The Ottoman-period finds include local vessels and imported ware. The local pottery consists of glazed Rashaya al-Fukhar bowls (Fig. 4:1), handmade cooking ware that includes a casserole (Fig. 4:5), Gaza Ware jars (Fig. 4:6), Gaza Ware drinking jugs, including an ibriq that was probably produced in the ‘Akko–Haifa region (Fig. 4:7) and fragments of clay tobacco pipes from the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries CE (Shapiro, below). The imported vessels include a bowl from Turkey that is glazed and decorated with yellow paint (Fig. 4:2), a Çanakkale Ware bowl from Turkey with a painted decoration (Fig. 4:3) and a Taches Noires-type glazed bowl from Liguria (Fig. 4:4).
A probe sunk to the west of the stone pile—an area which was not disturbed by the digging of refuse pits—revealed an accumulation of loose gray soil (L105; thickness 1.5 m) reaching down to the bedrock. The accumulation yielded fragments of local pottery from the Mamluk period, including green glazed bowls embellished with sgraffito (Fig. 5:1), the base of a bowl decorated with a red-brown design (Fig. 5:2; Stern 2014:91–93), yellowish brown glazed cooking bowls (Fig. 5:3), jars (Fig. 5:4) and jugs, including a small jug (Fig. 5:5).
A fragment of an antoninianus coin dated to the third quarter of the third century CE (IAA 145012) was discovered on the surface. This is the first find to be dated to this century at the site, and it may have reached it by chance.
 
Tobacco Pipes
Anastasia Shapiro
 
Eight fragments of Ottoman-period clay tobacco-smoking pipes were unearthed during the excavation. The typology of these pipes was correlated with that of some 2000 previously studied specimens retrieved from the excavations in the Hospitaller Compound in the Old City of ‘Akko (Shapiro, forthcoming).
 
A group of five pipes (Fig. 6:1–5) share the same lithology (physical characteristics of the earth elements). Their fabric is dense, and the colors of four of them are shades of gray due to use; No. 1, which was not used, is light red, and seems to have been fired at a higher temperature than the rest. This lithology suggests a possible provenance in areas with outcrops of the Lower Cretaceous Hatira Formation, or where erosion products of this formation were drained. All the pipes of this group bore a slip, whose color varies within burgundy and plum palette, and whose degree of preservation depends on the post-depositional conditions it endured. Two of these fragments (Nos. 1, 2) bear a horseshoe-shaped production mark on the right side of the shank, under the ring, and two (Nos. 1, 4) are decorated with gridiron rouletted stripes. The latter two are of a type dominant among the pipes from ʽAkko. Pipes of the same type were unearthed at Yoqne‘am (Avissar 2005:84, Figs. 4.1.5–9, 4.2.10), Kh. Burin (Kletter and Stern 2006:206–207), Nahal Tanninim (Sharvit 2011) and in Ridwan Gardens, ʽAkko (Shapiro 2016:97, Fig. 1:2). The pipes of this group may be dated to the second half of the eighteenth century CE.
One pipe (Fig. 7:1) has a soft and dense fabric, grayish brown in color, with a gray core. It contains many sand-size (0.7−1.0 mm) inclusions of chalk and hard gray limestone, lumps of orange shale and other dark inclusions, as well as a minute amount of silt and fine, sand-size quartz. The exterior is beige to yellowish brown and burnished. A possible date for this pipe is the second half of the eighteenth century CE.
The last two pipes (Fig. 7:2, 3) may be attributed to one fabric family, despite slight lithological differences between them. Their fabric is somewhat different from that of their typological parallels, but suggests foraminiferous marl (e.g., Paleocene Taqiye marl) as their raw material. The fabric is light brownish gray, soft and dense. It contains numerous microfossils and a minute amount of silt-size quartz, rounded and elongated, red and orange speckles of iron oxides and unidentified black inclusions. It also contains minute amounts of sand-size fossil remains, fragments of chalk and limestone (up to 1 mm), some of which are pebble-like and gray, and rounded dark brown inclusions of apparently ferruginous material (limonite). The exterior bears dark red to orange and yellowish red slip, badly preserved due to post-depositional conditions. The only parallels for these pipes known to the author are a few samples from the assemblage retrieved at the Hospitaller Compound within the Old City of ‘Akko (Shapiro, forthcoming), that may be dated to the late nineteenth century CE.
 
As the excavation recovered a large quantity of pottery without architectural remains, it would appear that this area was on the fringes of the ancient village whose remains were discovered in the past (Mokary 2009). The imported finds from the site probably reached it because the settlement was located beside a major trade road that passed nearby during the Ottoman period (Conder and Kitchener 1881:363, 379–380).