The excavation took place in the basement of a private house after antiquities were discovered during inspection work (Figs. 2, 3). The excavation uncovered a structure dating from the Mamluk period (Stratum II), over which a new structure was built in the late Ottoman period (Stratum I; eighteenth–nineteenth centuries CE), containing an industrial installation, drainage channels and two water cisterns; several phases were identified in each of the strata.
The excavation area lies approximately 120 m north of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and c. 75 m west of Bet Ha-Bad Street, in an area where several archaeological excavations have been conducted in recent years. An excavation on el-Jabsha Street (Barbé 2018:144) identified an industrial installation associated with leather or textile processing from the Early Islamic period (eighth–eleventh centuries CE; Fig. 1: A-5472). Another excavation, south of the current one, in the precinct of the Spanish Colegio del Pilar school for girls, uncovered a stone structure built in the late Fatimid–early Crusader period (twelfth–early thirteenth centuries CE) with evidence for the operation of a slaughterhouse (Fig. 1: G-96/1996); the structure was used as a cesspit at the end of the Mamluk period (sixteenth century CE; Clamer, Prag and Humbert 2017).
 
The entrance to the excavated basement faces east toward an open courtyard; beneath the courtyard floor is a cistern (L17). Two openings, to the east and north of the open courtyard, lead into spaces that were not documented. The courtyard is accessed from the ground floor (current street level) via a narrow staircase (L35). Four rooms were identified in the basement (A–D).
Room C (max. height 3 m) served as an entrance area between the open courtyard and the other rooms. It was an open area, which was roofed with a concrete cast only in the latest phase of Stratum I. An arch at the western end of this entrance area led into Room B, a square hall with a cross-vaulted ceiling (max. height c. 4 m), which was built in the latest phase of Stratum II. The entrance area opened on to a Room D (max. height 2.2 m) to its south, comprising the space under the arch that supports a staircase leading down to the courtyard; it too was formed in the early phase of Stratum I. Room A is the largest (c. 2.6 × 5.0 m, max. height 2.7 m) and has a slightly pointed barrel-vaulted ceiling. The earliest construction identified in the excavation—the early phase of Stratum II—was found in the area occupied by Room A, but the room was rebuilt in the early phase of Stratum I. The excavation was preceded by inspection work, during which soil fills were removed from Rooms A–D until the level of ancient remains was reached.
 
Stratum IIMamluk Period (thirteenth–sixteenth centuries CE)
Phase 1. The remains ascribed to this phase are of an eastern jamb of a barrel vault observed along the inner face of the southern wall of Room A (W16; Fig. 3: Section 3-3). Among the jamb’s building stones were potsherds with plaster remains, bearing a geometric motif (Fig. 4); These patterns are similar to designs that appear on a wheel-made vessel group that looks as if it was hand-made (Hand Made Geometric Ware); such vessels are usually dated to the Mamluk period.
 
Phase 2. The vault was destroyed at some stage, and some of its collapsed stones were found in Room A (L21). Fragments of two bowls (Fig. 5:1, 2) and two jars (Fig. 5:3, 4) belonging to Hand Made Geometric Ware, as well as a jar with a swollen neck (Fig. 5:5), all dating from the Mamluk period, were found among the rubble.
 
Phase 3. Room B was built as a square room and roofed with a cross-vault supported by three walls (W16, W28, W30). The walls were built of medium-sized square stones with gray bonding material mixed with black and white grits. The vault was built of unsorted fieldstones bonded together with the same material. An entrance built in the southern wall (W30) consists of dressed jambs surmounted by an arch; the entrance was blocked by a wall, built in Stratum I, Phase 1 (W29, see below; Fig. 6). A surface of fieldstones bonded with hard gray mortar (L37) was uncovered to the north of the opening, possibly the bedding of a floor that was not preserved. Although this phase is not firmly dated to the Mamluk period, it clearly precedes Stratum I.
 
Stratum I—Late Ottoman Period (nineteenth–twentieth centuries CE)
Phase 1. The floor level in Room A, to the north of W16, was raised, and it was enclosed with three additional walls (W10, W11, W27). The three walls, set at least in part on the remains of the vault of Stratum II, Phase 1, were built in a similar manner as those of Room B. The room’s slightly pointed barrel vault was also constructed in this phase. An opening in W16 was built of dressed stone jambs, and a lintel surmounted by an air vent (Fig. 3: Section 3-3).
A water cistern was installed in the center of the room. It had a square opening, and its shaft (L4; 1.4 m) was lined with rectangular dressed stones. Due to safety considerations, the cistern’s interior was not documented, but it probably incorporated a more ancient underground cavity (Fig. 3: Section 2-2). A grayish white plaster floor (L12) abutted the walls of Room A, and to a settling pit (L13) installed to the south of the cistern (Fig. 7). A shallow channel (L38) embedded in the plaster floor led to the settling pit from the south. Upon dismantling the floor, a late Ottoman tobacco pipe was found (Fig. 12:21). A round plastered installation (L8; diam. 0.5 m, depth 1.0 m; Fig. 8) with a sump in its floor was found to the east of the cistern. The installation was fed by a rectangular pool to its north (L9; 1.5 × 1.5 m), whose walls were plastered and whose floor was paved with stone slabs, most of which had been robbed; the negative of the stone paving is clearly visible in the gray bonding material that overlies a bedding of small and medium-sized fieldstones (Fig. 9). A square plastered shaft (0.5 × 0.5 m; Fig. 3: Section 1-1) was installed in the ceiling above the pool; its function remains unclear.
In this phase, Room B and the space to its east (Room C) were filled with soil (B—L2; C—L1). The southern opening to Room B was blocked in this phase with a plastered wall (W29; Fig. 6), built of fieldstones above Soil Fill 2. It is likely that the northern and southern wall of Room C (W23, W32) were also built in this phase, as well as the arch (W31; Figs. 2, 3: Section 4-4) supporting the staircase (L35) descending from street level to the basement; Room D is the space created under the supporting arch. A plastered channel (L19; Fig. 10) was set into the fill along W 23 in the northern part of Room C, leading to the cistern (L17) in the open courtyard. The channel was fed by a gutter found in the northwestern corner of Room C’s ceiling (Fig. 11).
The pottery from Soil Fills in Rooms B and C comprises two neck fragments of jars bearing net-like stamp impressions of the Ayyubid period (twelfth–thirteenth centuries CE; Fig. 12:1, 2), alongside fragments of three Iznik bowls (Fig. 12:3–5), another bowl (Fig. 12:6), a cup (Fig. 12:7), two Black Gaza Ware jars (Fig. 12:8, 9), nargileh heads (Fig. 12:10–13) and tobacco pipes (Fig. 12:14–19) from the late Ottoman period. The fills also yielded three glass items and from the Mamluk and Ottoman periods (Gorin-Rosen, below), a perforated silver coin minted in Venice by Doge Lorenzo Priuli (1556–1559 CE; IAA 174184) and a domino tile made of worked bone (Fig. 13). Also found in the fills were shells of two types of mollusks commonly found on the Mediterranean coast: two Mediterranean limpets (Patella caerulea; Fig. 14:1) and six saltwater clams (Glycymeris nummaria; Fig. 14:2).
 
Phase 2. In Room A, a new, beaten-earth floor was laid (L6, L7), covering the channel and the settling pit. In their place, a plastered channel (L36; Fig. 15) was constructed and covered with stone slabs; it was fed by a gutter of clay pipes (L20; Fig. 12:24) in the room’s southeastern corner. In Room C, Channel 19 was narrowed where it collected the water from the gutter (L22; Fig. 16). Where the channel was narrowed, a clay pipe was found (L18; Fig. 12:23).
 
Phase 3. The Phase 1 installations in Room A were put out of use and sealed under soil fills (L5). It was probably at this time that the slabs in the floor of Pool 9 were removed. The cistern opening was raised, and a new beaten earth floor (L3) was laid in the room. When the floor was dismantled, two late Ottoman tobacco pipes (Fig. 12:20, 22) and two coins—a worn Mamluk coin of the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries CE (IAA 174123) and an Ottoman coin of the second half of the seventeenth century CE (Misr mint; IAA 174183)—were found. It was probably during this phase that Channel 19 in Room C was also rendered obsolete, and the area was covered over and raised with soil fills.
 
Phase 4. Cistern 4 in Room A and Cistern 17 in the open courtyard fell into disuse and were converted into refuse pits.
 
Phase 5. Room C, which hitherto was an open space, was roofed with concrete ceiling put up between Walls 23 and 31, and a brick wall (W33) was constructed to demarcate its eastern side.
 
 
Glass Finds
Yael Gorin-Rosen
 
Three glass items were recovered from Soil Fill in Room B (L2; Stratum I, Phase 1). One fragment belongs to a colorless glass beaker with a yellowish tinge (Fig. 17:1). The poor-quality glass contains numerous bubbles, black impurities and twisted blowing marks. The rim is upright, fire-rounded, and slightly wider than the body. The body is cylindrical, and the wall is relatively thin. The rim belongs to a type of beaker that was very common in the Mamluk period. Similar beakers were found at the Mamluk quarter in Zefat, in an assemblage dated to the fourteenth century CE (Gorin-Rosen 2019:109, Fig. 2:10, 11, and see references therein to Hama in Syria and Fustat in Egypt). These beakers are also known from other, as-yet unpublished sites in Jerusalem and other locations in Israel.
The second shard belongs to a small, colorless glass bottle with a pale purplish tinge (Fig. 17:2). The glass is roughly made and of poor quality, containing numerous bubbles. It has a short funnel-shaped rim decorated with a trail of opaque white glass wound around its edge. The neck is narrow. According to the fabric and shape, the bottle dates from the Ottoman period.
The third shard belongs to a round windowpane with a folded edge that is hollow and pressed (Fig. 17:3). The glass is blueish green, containing numerous bubbles and impurities, and it is coarsely made. Panes of this type appeared as early as the Byzantine period and were used alongside rectangular panes until the Ottoman period; it is, therefore, difficult to date the pane fragment found in the current excavation. Similar panes are well-known from Jerusalem and other sites of the Byzantine and Umayyad periods (Gorin-Rosen 2005:207–208, Fig. 43:3) as well as Mamluk period sites, like Zefat (Gorin-Rosen 2019:146–147, Fig. 12:12, and see references therein to Crusader-period windowpanes from Bet She’an, ‘Akko and Apollonia, and Mamluk panes from Be’er Miriam in Nazareth).
 
Archaeozoology
Tehila Shadiel
 
The excavation yielded a small assemblage of faunal remains, consisting of 75 bone fragments (Table 1). Of these, 36 are of sheep/goat (Ovis/Capris), 12 of cattle (Bos taurus), two cat bones (Felis catus) and two chicken bones (Gallus gallus domesticus). The rest are identified to body size only, comprising 23 bones of medium-sized species (e.g., sheep or goat).
All the bones were found in Chamber, in the floors and fills between them. All the loci where the bones were found (L3, L5, L7, L12, L14, L15) are attributed to Stratum I and date from the late Ottoman period, with the single exception of L21, which is attributed to Stratum II (Mamluk period).
The distribution of skeletal parts (Table 2) indicates exploitation of meat-rich parts, such as limbs, long bones and ribs, and the paucity of meat-poor parts, such as toe bones and skulls. The individuals’ age according to the bones retaining epiphyses (bone ends): 21 bones have fused epiphyses (15% of the assemblage) while only three (2%) have unfused epiphyses, indicating that most of the individuals were mature. The teeth (3% of the total faunal remains) manifest advanced attrition, attesting again to the mature age of the represented individuals. The specimens’ advanced age suggests that most animals were fully exploited for secondary products, such as wool and milk; nevertheless, the limited size of the assemblage does not allow for clear-cut conclusions.
No signs of predators’ gnawing were observed on the bone fragments. Three long goat bones retain cut marks, and one bone is burnt. The limited evidence of human intervention on the bones is probably because the assemblage is very small.
 
Table 1. Distribution of Animal Bones by Loci
 
L3
L5
L7
L12
L14
L15
L21
Total
Sheep/goat
3
10
4
7
6
4
2
36 (48%)
Cattle
 
12
 
 
 
 
 
12 (16%)
Chicken
 
 
 
 
 
2
 
2 (2.5%)
Cat
 
 
1
 
 
 
1
2 (2.5%)
Medium-sized animals
2
 
4
8
6
 
3
23 (31%)
Total
5
(6%)
22 (30%)
9 (12%)
15 (20%)
12 (16%)
6
(8%)
6
(8%)
75 (100%)
 
Table 2. Breakdown of Skeletal Parts
 
Sheep/goat
Medium-sized animals
Cattle
Predators
Fowl
Total
Head
4
 
1
 
 
5
Limbs
12
 
1
2
 
15
Ribs
10
1
2
 
 
13
Finguers
3
 
 
 
 
3
Long bones
7
22
8
 
2
39
Total
36
23
12
2
2
75
 
It is impossible to determine the date and plan of the earliest phase of the Mamluk structure, but we can confidently state that part of it was destroyed during the Mamluk period. Later on, during or after the Mamluk period, Chamber B was built on the remains of the earlier structure. During the late Ottoman period, alterations were made, and the chambers were linked together to form a basement area whose entrance lay below the elevated street level. The building was used for an industry involving the extraction of liquids. Since industrial installations in antiquity produced noxious odors, they were removed from the city’s residential areas. In the late Ottoman period, the northeastern quarter of the Old City was sparsely populated and was, therefore, a suitable location for such an industry; a similar phenomenon was also observed in excavations on el-Jabsha Street and at the Colegio del Pilar school.
The faunal remains from Chamber A attest to the consumption of high-quality meat throughout the building’s use or in its immediate surroundings.
As the area’s residential population grew, industrial sites were moved out of the city, and as the water supply improved, the cisterns became obsolete and were converted into refuse pits.