Area A
The eastern part of a large ‘courtyard’-type building (22 × 40 m; Fig. 1) was discovered. Its plan is incomplete because the western part of the structure was damaged and the walls extended beyond the boundaries of the excavation. Most of the walls were built of mud bricks and a few were stone-built. Many of the walls had no foundations, whereas a small number of them, particularly in the southern part, were founded directly on kurkar bedrock. The stone walls were built of small and medium-sized kurkar fieldstones (the indigenous stone), bonded with dark mortar; some of the walls were preserved c. 1 m high (W10; Fig. 2). 

 

The building comprised three or four wings, each consisting of several rooms; the fourth wing, postulated in the west, was not preserved. The wings were built around a courtyard, which had two stone-built rooms in its center (W10–W13; Fig. 3) and two floor segments (L124, L133). It seems that some of the stones used for the construction were in secondary use. The walls of the rooms, surrounding the courtyard, were usually built of sun-dried mud bricks (width 0.6–1.0 m). The eastern wall of the building (W15; Fig. 4) was exposed for nearly its entire length of 40 m. The southern wing included two rooms (L144, L146) and a floor section (L134). The eastern wing had two parallel walls (W15, W19) that were connected by a perpendicular wall (W18), suggesting the existence of rooms, whose walls were not preserved due to the kurkar bedrock proximity to surface. Four or five rooms, not arranged in a row as in the other wings, as well as sections of floors (L135, L152), were partially exposed in the northern wing. The various width of the walls in this wing reached as much as 1 m wide in several places. All the aforementioned floors and a section of another floor (L164) east of W15, consisted of mud-brick material, overlaid with fragments of pottery vessels, coins and basalt pounding and milling implements.

 

Two differently oriented mud-brick walls (W30, W31), which seem to be a later addition to the building, were discovered southeast of it. To their north and east of the building’s eastern wing was a round tabun (L175; diam. 2 m) that may have served as the main oven for cooking or baking.

 

Area B
Some 30 m east of Area A, remains of a hearth (burnt mud-brick material) surrounded with sections of mud-brick walls and numerous fragments of pottery vessels were exposed. These were probably the remains of another building, smaller than the one in Area A. To its west, an inclined surface of mud-brick material, whose northern part was founded on shells, was discovered.

 

Area C
Some 7 m west of the Area A building, a winepress was uncovered. It consisted of a square treading surface (7.5 × 7.5 m), which was dug into earth and coated with several layers of gray mortar and shells. A light colored hydraulic plaster over a bedding of pebbles was applied to it. The collecting vat, whose excavation was not completed, was to its west.

 

Area D
A winepress (Fig. 5) was discovered in the eastern part of the area. It included a treading floor (7 × 8 m) and a globular collecting vat (inner diam. 3 m, depth 1.64 m, 4.5 cu m) with one corner, whose upper part was built of fieldstones. A step was built in the corner to facilitate descending into the vat. A circular settling pit was revealed at the bottom of the vat. The treading floor and the vat were dug into the hamra soil and coated with light colored plaster.