A single excavation square was opened, revealing building remains and ceramic finds from the Early Islamic period. In the upper part of the square fieldstone collapse and plaster were exposed above a thin layer of alluvium, overlying a plaster floor (thickness 2 cm) that was applied to a bedding of hamra (thickness 5–7 cm). Two pillars were found above the plaster floor, one on the northern side (0.6

 × 0.6 m, height 0.56 m) and the other, which was mostly destroyed by a backhoe, on the southern side. A curved wall (exposed length 1 m, width 0.56 m) was discovered in the northwestern part of the square; it was built of dry, fieldstone construction and preserved a single course high; it severed the plaster floor. At a depth of c. 0.1 m below the plaster floor, another beaten-kurkar floor (thickness 2–3 cm) was detected, superposing a layer of reddish-brown soil (thickness c0.1 m) that was deposited on sand.

 

An aqueduct constructed below the floor had severed it. In the aqueduct was a pipe that consisted of different-sized ceramic sections, having a U-shaped cross-section (0.27 m, length of two sections 0.35 m; Fig. 1:5). The sections were placed one inside the other on a bed of mortar and above them similar pipe sections were set, facing downward; together, they formed a closed ceramic pipe.

 

The ceramic finds were meager. Pottery fragments that dated to the Mamluk period and modern times were collected from surface, whereas in the excavation, a small number of potsherds from the Early Islamic period, among them jars (Fig. 1:1–3) and a jug (Fig. 1:4), were recovered mainly from below the beaten-kurkar floor.