The excavation (125 sq m) unearthed parts of walls and habitation levels dating from the Persian and early Hellenistic periods. Another excavation in the vicinity exposed remains from the Persian and Hellenistic periods (A-7540; Abu Raya 2017; Fig. 1: A-7540). Unfortunately, much of the excavation data was lost in a fire in the Israel Antiquities Authority’s offices in ‘Akko, and consequently some of the details are missing.
 
The remains of a building exposed beneath an alluvial soil layer comprised four walls (W12, W13, W21, W29), and four piers (W22, W23, W31, W32) arranged in a square within the walls (Figs. 2, 3). The walls were built of large and medium-sized fieldstones with a small-stone core. The piers were built of ashlars arranged as headers and stretchers, also incorporating fieldstones—a characteristic Phoenician construction method. The piers were probably pillar bases supporting the building’s roof. Earthen surfaces abutted the walls, yielding pottery, a clay figurine horse head, a clay loom weight, glass shards, metal items, and coins dated to the late Persian and the early Hellenistic periods (fourth and third centuries BCE). Some animal bones were also recovered.
 
Pottery. The Persian-period pottery assemblage (fifth–fourth centuries BCE) includes bowls (Fig. 4:1–8), mortaria (Fig. 4:9–13), a cooking pot (Fig. 4:14), straight-shouldered jars (Fig. 5:1–4), torpedo jars (Fig. 5:5, 6), amphorae (Fig. 5:7–10), jar bases (Fig. 5:11–16), juglets (Fig. 5:17, 18) and the base of a black-glazed skyphos (Fig. 5:19). A horse-head figurine (Fig. 6:1; Dayagi-Mendels 2002:153–154, Fig. 7.16) and a clay loom weight (Fig. 6:2) are also attributed to the Persian period. The Early Hellenistic-period pottery (third century BCE) includes an open cooking pot (Fig. 7:1) found at surface level, a jar (Fig. 7:2) and two amphorae (Fig. 7:3, 4).
 
Glassware. The excavation yielded a single identified and dated glass fragment (L33, B1100; Fig. 8). Although it was a small body fragment, it was identified by its core-forming production technique and its ornamentation. Glassware was produced using the core-forming technique when glass was first introduced in the mid-second millennium BCE, and the method continued in use until the invention of glassblowing in the latter half of the first century BCE. Trends, vessel shapes and decorative methods changed during the technique’s 1,500 years of use. The glass sherd is a fragment of Mediterranean Group glassware, dated to the sixth–first centuries BCE. The Mediterranean Group is divided into three distinct successive sub-groups. In Israel, glass vessels of Mediterranean Group I, the earliest sub-group, have been discovered at sites dated to the Persian period (Jackson-Tal 2008:8083). As core-formed glassware is relatively rare in Israel, the shard is an important find.
The shard has a very fine wall made of bluish glass. The glass is pitted with weathering, and it is rough on the interior. The outer wall is decorated with colored trails drawn into an elongated zigzag pattern with two horizontal drawn trails below it, one yellow and one azure, forming a combed pattern composed of three colors: yellow, white and azure. Based on the pattern’s design, the shard probably belongs to the lower part of a vessel with a globular or flattened body, rather than to a cylindrical vessel such as an alabastron. Mediterranean Group vessels with wide bodies include the aryballos (flask), the oinochoe (juglet with one handle and a trefoil rim), the hydriskos (small jar with two small carrying handles and one handle for pouring), and the amphoriskos (small two-handled jar).
The design on the fragment resembles that on similar vessels dating from the fifth century BCE, when there was a tendency to leave some of the outer surface plain and to leave a space between the combed decoration and the horizontal lines. The Dobkin Collection at the Israel Museum contains intact examples of this ware (Israeli 2003:56–57, 59; Cat. Nos. 39, 40, 43, 46).
 
Metal Items. The excavation yielded a lead fishing-net weight folded in two (Fig. 9:1) that is similar to a weight attributed to the Persian period from an excavation at the foot of Tel ‘Akko (Sari 2016:23*); a bronze needle (length 0.12 m; Fig. 9:2), probably used to sew coarse fabrics, that resembles a Persian-period needle from an excavation at the foot of Tel ‘Akko (Sari 2016: 22*; Fig. 1:1, 2); and a Scytho-Iranian iron arrowhead (Fig. 9:3), similar to an arrowhead found in Stratum 11 at orbat ‘Ua, dated to the Persian period (Getzov et al. 2009:149, Fig. 4.10).
 
Coins. Seven poorly preserved coins were retrieved, none of which were fully identified (Table 1).
 
Table 1. The Coins
No.
Locus
Basket
Date BCE
Ruler
Comments
IAA No.
1
16
1021
200–187
Antiochus III (?)
Identified by size
167262
2
28
1054
3rd C.
Ptolemy
 
167267
3
28
1063
200–187
Antiochus III (?)
Identified by size
167264
4
W29
1081
200–187
Antiochus III (?)
Identified by size
167263
5
30
1071
3rd C.
Ptolemy
 
167266
6
30
1072
2nd C.
Seleucid
Small fragment
167265
7
30
1073
3rd C.
Ptolemy
 
167261
 
Faunal Remains. The animal bones were poorly preserved, some precluding identification, although they belonged to diagnostic skeletal parts. Fifteen bones were identified. The most common species is sheep/goat (47%), followed by cattle (40%), and horse (13%). The teeth and phalanges are the most common skeletal parts of all three species, these denser bones tending to be better preserved. Whilst the limited assemblage does not enable an understanding of the site’s economy, the identification of all the bones as belonging to domesticated animals, suggests that the economy was probably based mainly on farm animals and not on hunting.
 
The excavation exposed the limited remains of a building constructed in typical Phoenician style and dating from the end of the Persian and the early Hellenistic periods. The building was probably a house that was part of a residential quarter, attesting to the expansion of the settlement to the east of Tel ‘Akko in this period.