The bulldozer created a 4.5 m high section, which was straightened in the excavation to a width of c. 3.5 m. Building remains at the top of the section were ascribed to the Ottoman period by the local residents. Below them was an accumulation of collapse that overlaid a plastered elliptical pit, hewn in the soft kirton bedrock (2.0 × 2.6 m, height 1.95 m; Fig. 1). An aperture (diam. 0.21 m) was cut at the top of the pit’s northern wall and beneath it, at the bottom, was rock-cut settling pit. This installation was probably a water cistern.

 

The cistern contained collapsed masonry and soil fill that yielded numerous fragments of pottery vessels, dating from the middle of the first century BCE to the fifth century CE, including Galilean bowls (Fig. 2:1–8), kraters (Fig. 2:9–12), cooking pots (Fig. 2:13–15), a jug (Fig. 2:16), a flask (Fig. 2:17), jars (Fig. 2:18–23) and a lid (Fig. 2:24), as well as two iron picks (Fig. 3). Most of the pottery vessels dated to the third century CE and it therefore seems that the cistern was no longer in use at this time.