A routine salvage excavation ahead of the construction of a new bus terminal in Ramat Gan revealed a surprising find: an industrial and commercial complex dating back some 1,300 years.

Digging for several months in the parking lot of the city’s Winter Stadium, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) uncovered a network of straight, intersecting streets lined with shops, warehouses, large pottery kilns, and a series of industrial installations that once produced liquids on a considerable scale.

The find offers a rare glimpse into the economic workings of Israel during the early Islamic period, Yoav Arbel, one of the site’s excavation directors, told The Times of Israel.

“This find was quite unexpected, and exceeded our expectations,” Arbel said in a phone interview. “We expected to find archaeology here, but we did not expect to find an entire commercial and industrial complex from the seventh and eighth centuries CE. The whole thing is so well organized, it is clear that engineers planned it in advance, and that the government probably was involved as well.”

The complex featured straight streets that intersected at 90-degree angles, lined with a series of rooms that served as shops or warehouses, along with plastered industrial facilities, pottery kilns and more, said Arbel, who led the excavation along with Lior Rauchberger. In addition to pottery, several installations were used for industrial production of liquids that have not yet been identified by researchers.

“It was so orderly that in some cases, we were able to predict where we were going to find new walls because that’s what made sense,” Arbel noted.

In addition to the building remnants, dozens of pottery vessels and intact oil lamps were found, along with coins, fragments of glass vessels, and numerous bronze tableware and cosmetic implements. Iron pickaxe heads, a........

© The Times of Israel