Stratum I. Fifteen cist tombs were exposed in the western part of the area and some ten other tombs were discerned on surface. The tombs were documented but not excavated (Figs. 1, 2). They consisted of a row of small fieldstones that were placed above the deceased in an east–west direction. Some of the tombs were hewn into the rock-cuttings of Stratum II. The finds from Stratum I came from a settlement dating to the end of the Ottoman period, which continued to use the cemetery until the Arab village of Ijzim was destroyed in 1948.

 

Stratum II. Bedrock surfaces used for quarrying masonry stones (see Fig. 1) were found. The negatives of the quarried stones were discernable, as well as the severance channels into which wooden poles or iron rods were inserted for detachment. A square quarry nearby was completely exploited and later used as a collection vat for a winepress. The corner of another quarry (L2306) where tombs were hewn during the Ottoman period was exposed. A winepress, composed of a square treading floor (3.1 × 3.4 m; Figs. 1, 3) that sloped westward, in the direction of a collecting vat (2 × 2 m; Fig. 4) was found. A conduit lined with potsherds conveyed the liquid from the treading floor, via a round intermediate vat paved with mosaics, to the collecting vat. The base of a screw press with a square hole (L2316; 0.3 × 0.3; Fig. 5) in its center was set in the middle of the treading floor, which was paved with white tesserae (1.5 × 1.5 m) arranged in three frames around the base of the screw. The tesserae in the inner and outer frames were set in rows, whereas those in the middle frame were arranged diagonally, thereby forming a geometric pattern. The floor was delimited by a railing that consisted in part of low bedrock; a small section of it that was coated with potsherd-inlaid plaster was preserved. A staircase paved with coarse white tesserae was located in the northeastern corner of the collecting vat, whose walls were coated with white plaster, applied to a bedding of small stones. The vat was paved with coarse white tesserae and had a settling vat paved with white tesserae in its southeastern corner. A rock-hewn channel (L2314) that ran the length of the winepress to its south apparently drained liquid into the collecting vat.

The jar fragments embedded in the plaster, applied to the walls of the treading floor and the collecting vat (Fig. 6:5–13), and the bowl fragments recovered from the fill inside the winepress (Fig. 6:1–4), indicate that the winepress should date to the seventh century CE. The winepress probably belonged to the industrial region of the settlement during the Byzantine period, which included other installations that were exposed in former excavations.