A section of a terrace wall that had been discovered in a preliminary survey was damaged. It had drawn the surveyors’ attention because fragments of a crushing basin from an olive press were incorporated in it. The excavation ascertained that the parts of the olive press were in secondary use. The terrace wall was curved; its northern part was washed away and the southern end, lying beyond the limits of the excavation, abutted the remains of a building at Horbat Anusha, c. 20 m from the excavation site.

 

The terrace wall section (length c. 9 m, width c. 2.2 m; Fig. 1) was preserved two courses high (c. 0.6 m). It was built of two rows of large stones (max. length c. 0.6 m) with a core of smaller stones. The olive press parts within the wall included fragments of a crushing basin (yam; diam. 1.6 m, thickness c. 0.4 m; Fig. 2). A trapezoid-shaped weight from an olive press (broad base––0.40 × 0.53 m; narrow base––0.25 × 0.25 m; height 0.63 m), with two holes (diam. c. 5 cm) in its center, was set at the northern end of the wall.

 

This is one of many terrace walls at Horbat Anusha, which were apparently used as boundaries of cultivation plots. A few potsherds dating to the twelfth–thirteenth centuries CE, when the ruin was inhabited, were found.