The excavation exposed a simple winepress (4 × 7 m; Figs. 2, 3), incompletely hewn. The well-preserved installation, exposed in a previous survey, comprised a trapezoidal treading floor and a rectangular collecting vat. A well-preserved rock-cut mortar was found next to the treading floor. The material finds were scant and eroded and were of no aide in dating the installation. The pottery sherds date from the Hellenistic till the Ottoman periods, which are represented in excavations conducted over the years on the slopes of the hill.
The hewn treading floor (L100, max. length from east to west 3 m, width in west 3 m, width in east 2.25 m, max. depth next to the western edge c. 0.6 m) was trapezoidal. The eastern wall slanted somewhat outward and the northern and western walls were vertical; the southern wall was several centimeters higher than the treading floor and bore signs of the damage it sustained from mechanical equipment prior to the excavation.
Remains of severance channels (Figs. 4, 5) were exposed in the treading floor, parallel and adjacent to its walls. Rectangular depressions exposed in the floor’s center indicated how it was quarried to utilize the rock that was removed as a source for building stones.
A neatly hewn conical mortar (L102, diam. 0.45 m, depth 0.35 m; Fig. 6) with a concave bottom was exposed c. 0.2 m west of the edge of the treading floor.
A rectangular collecting vat (length c. 1.4 m, width c. 0.6 m, depth c. 1.2 m) oriented east–west was about 0.3 m north of and parallel to the treading floor (Fig. 7). The upper part of the vat was deliberately blocked by two layers of large stones (L103); beneath them was a fill of medium-sized stones. The eastern half of the collecting vat was excavated, the western half provided a cross section for identifying the phases of fill inside it. On the floor of the collecting vat, in the northeastern corner, was a rectangular step (north–south length c. 0.5 m, width 0.28 m, height 0.15 m) whose sides slanted gently toward the center of the vat. Above it, on the northern wall, was a cantilevered step, c. 0.35 m below the edge of the vat (height 0.26 m, width 0.12 m, depth c. 3 cm; Fig. 8) that was installed to facilitate exit from the installation. An unfinished cut of a drainage opening (outer diam. c. 0.15 m, depth c. 012 m; Fig. 9), leading toward the treading floor, was exposed on the southern side of the collecting vat, c. 0.2 m from its southwestern corner.
The rectangular severance marks on the treading floor indicate the winepress was used later as a quarry for building stones. The absence of any traces of plaster to create a smooth surface, the lack of a drainage conduit between the treading floor and the collecting vat, and the partially hewn drainage hole are all evidence suggesting that the winepress was not completed quarried.
A pit (L101) that turned out to be a natural fissure was exposed south of the treading floor. Natural soil, devoid of finds, was revealed at the bottom of the fissure.
Ottoman pottery sherds on the collecting vat floor and Roman-Byzantine sherds in the layers of fill above them, as well as the way the vat was filled with soil mixed with stones, with no clear stratification, indicate that the vat was intentionally blocked, at the earliest, during the Ottoman period.