In January 2018, an excavation was conducted at 136–138 Herzl Street in Tel Aviv (Permit No. A-8206; map ref. 178447/662263; Fig. 1), prior to construction work. The excavation, undertaken on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and financed by Yossi Avrahami Ltd., was conducted by A. Dagot-Ziv, with the assistance of Y. Amrani and E. Bachar (administration), M. Kahan (surveying and drafting), Y. Marmelstein (field photography) and D. Golan (preliminary inspections).
The excavation (2.5 squares) unearthed the remains of a long wall (W100; excavated length 12 m, width 0.5 m; Figs. 2, 3) on a north–south alignment. The wall was built of small and medium-sized kurkar stones bonded with clayey hamra, and its east face was coated with gray plaster. This was probably the building’s outer wall, to which the plaster was applied for moisture protection. A burnt plaster floor (L105) abutted the wall on the west. The accumulation of burnt soil above the floor contained large quantities of rubble and building debris.
Trial trenches dug beside the wall yielded Ottoman potsherds (not drawn). Based on the pottery and the construction method of the wall, the building should be dated to the late Ottoman period, namely the second half of the nineteenth century CE.