Kh en-Nasar
BAP013 JADIS2120.030
2006 Field season report:
East of Kufr Abil, adjacent to the modern road which runs south to the Wadi Rayyan (Yabis), Kh en-Nasar 2 is a small mound almost entirely built over by modern housing.
Khirbet en-Nasar and nearby housing
We worked for two days in the yard of the family of Mohammed Youssef al-Bisharat (Abu Ahmed). Most of the yard is planted as an olive and fruit tree orchard, but bedrock is very close to the surface.
Yard of Mohammed Youssef al-Bisharat (Abu Ahmed)
We retrieved a lot of late Byzantine pottery from the site, and there are rock-cut installations still visible. Indeed, we noticed this yard in April 2006 because they had well cut stone blocks used as garden edging - they must have come from a dismantled ancient wall, although it could have been as recent as Ottoman.
Rock cut installation
2008 Field season report:
Kh en-Nasar was sampled in 2006. Initial processing of ceramics revealed several fragments of pot-spacer rings, suggesting pottery manufacturing on the site itself. As the 2006 team had only 1.5 days at the site, we decided to split the team in 2008 and try and sample other areas of the small khirbet in case further or more conclusive evidence for pottery making could be recovered.
Reconnaissance showed that very little of the ancient site was available for research: blocks were either largely covered by house complexes, courtyards were concrete covered, or those owners with larger plots had usually recently imported red soil to enrich their gardens. Only the very large open block we sampled in 2006 and a smaller orchard across the lane were available for sampling. Kh en-Nasar was revisited on 25 November, by half the team, who laid out three sampling squares. The site is located in the modern village of Khirbet Nasar part of which is accessible via the private orchards attached to modern housing which in turn is accessible from the modern bitumen road adjacent to the west. Modern threats to the site continue to be the potential for construction and cultivation damage.
5x5 surface pick up