Majdal Yābā: More Insights on the Site in Medieval and Late Ottoman to Mandatory Times Itamar Taxel 1 with contributions by Alexander Glick 1 and Miriam Pines 2 1. Israel Antiquities Authority and 2. Tel Aviv University itamartaxel@gmail.com © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2017, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX JIA 4.1 (2017) 49–86 Journal of Islamic Archaeology ISSN (print) 2051-9710 https://doi.org/10.1558/jia.34119 Journal of Islamic Archaeology ISSN (online) 2051-9729 Keywords: Palestine, Majdal Yābā, Crusader, late Ottoman and British Mandate periods, rile cartridges as a dating tool, animal economy In 2016 another excavation season was carried out at Majdal Yābā, concentrating on three rooms (02, 03 and 22) in the ground loor of the Ottoman-Mandatory manor house. Rooms 02 and 03 are large, adjacent halls apparently designated as storage and working areas, while Room 22 is a smaller living quarter. Each of the rooms revealed evidence for at least two main construction and utilization phases during the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods. In Room 03 were also unearthed—for the irst time in the site—substantial foundations belonging to the Crusader castle of Mirabel, associated with well-dated inds. The analyzing of the present excavation included a irst study of the faunal remains found in many of the Ottoman and Mandatory contexts, which shed much light on animal exploitation at the manor house and the (sometimes surprising) diet habits of its residents. Also studied were the rile cartridges discovered in the excavation, the majority of which represent a homogeneous assemblage of First World War German ammunition. This hitherto largely overlooked class of artifacts was found to be much useful as an archaeological dating tool of early modern remains, alongside their contribution to the knowledge about the site’s history in the early 20th century. Introduction In a previous article (Tsuk et al. 2016), we presented and analyzed the results of the 2006, 2009 and 2010 excavations carried out at the site of Majdal Yābā (at the west- ern fringes of the Samaria Hills; New Israel Grid 19600/66530) following the site’s announcement as a national park. As already noted, the two major phases of exist- ence of this multi-period site occurred in the Crusader period, during which a castle named Mirabel was established here, and in the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods, when a monumental manor house (the estate center of the Rayyān family) was built atop and around the remains of the medieval castle. The latter, two-storey