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‘Atiqot 79 (2014)
ISBN 2948-040X
Excavations at the Dar el-Gharbiya Neighborhood of Kafr Yasif: A Crusader Estate in the Territory of ‘Akko
(with a contribution by Yael Gorin-Rosen)
(pp. 233–261)
Danny Syon and Edna J. Stern
Keywords: Crusader kingdom, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, typology, Acre Ware, molasses jars, sugar production, maritime trade, quantitative analysis, Beirut, Troad area, numismatics, coins, lead token, glass-working furnaces, glass production, industrial area, rural settlement, historical identification, historical documents
Six excavation squares and three test trenches were opened. In Square A, a building was unearthed, probably first constructed in the Byzantine period and reused, probably as a stable, in the Crusader period (twelfth century); the last phase of the building (also a stable?) dates to the Mamluk period (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries). The earliest architectural stratum in Squares B and D dates to the late Byzantine or Early Islamic period, followed by an architectural phase from the Crusader period (the twelfth century); the last phase, including a water system, dates to the Mamluk period. Square C contained a large quantity of pottery, mostly from the Crusader period, but also from the Byzantine and Late Roman periods. Square E yielded fragmentary remains, and Square F yielded massive walls, closely aligned with the Crusader walls in Square A. The finds included pottery dating to the Persian, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Umayyad and Abbasid periods, as well as from the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods. Most of the pottery dates to the main Crusader-period phase (twelfth–early thirteenth centuries) and is domestic in character, including mostly local ware and a few imported wares from Greece and the Aegean region. The glass finds, including dismantled glass furnaces (studied by Yael Gorin-Rosen), date primarily to the late Byzantine and early Umayyad periods.