A single square was opened in the core of the ancient village, southwest of the center of the tell, where a building from the beginning of the twentieth century CE once stood. Bedrock was discovered close to surface, c. 0.1 m at the eastern end of the square and 0.5 m at its western end. The soil fill (thickness up to 0.4 m) that covered bedrock included numerous potsherds from the Mamluk period. Above it, in a layer of light-colored soil (thickness up to 0.1 m) was a small amount of potsherds from the Early Islamic period. It seems that this layer had originated in debris brought over for the purpose of leveling the area prior to the construction of the house.

 

No building remains were found. A small rock-hewn and non-plastered pit (diam. 1.1 m, depth 0.5 m) that was sealed with a heap of stones was exposed at the southwestern end of the square. The potsherds recovered from the pit were dated to the Mamluk period and it therefore seems that the pit was both used and blocked up during this period. The ceramic artifacts included local and imported household wares that dated to the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries CE, including bowls and plates (Fig. 1:1–9), cooking pots (Fig. 2:1, 2) and jars (Fig. 2:3, 4), as well as fragments of frit-ware plates, decorated with blue and turquoise patterns below a layer of transparent glaze (Figs. 1:10–12; 3), which are also dated to the Mamluk period.