The SWP found cisterns cut in the rock and a well. Dauphin described the place as being an ancient village on a hill slope, with traces of ancient remains, including cisterns and caves carved into rock.
Ottoman era
Rumana, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, and in the census of 1596, the village was located in the nahiya of Sara in the liwa of Lajjun. It had a population of 12 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 9,000 akçe. The Dutch lieutenant van der Velde travelled in the area in 1851–2. He noted that Scottish missionaries in 1839 had found many old wells and other old remains in the area. He also described the village as being small, and identified it with ancient Hadad-Rimon. French explorerVictor Guérin visited the village in 1863 and 1870, and described it as being reduced to "twenty miserable dwellings". He did not notice any traces of antiquity, except for a few cisterns in the rock and a working well. Guérin agreed that the village was Hadad-Rimon, but disagreed with Jeromes assertion that Hadad-Rimon was identical with Maximianopolis. In the 1882 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine, the village was described as:
A small village of mud and stone, near the foot of the hills, with wells to the west and olives below. This village seems to mark the site of Maximianopolis, a town 20 Roman miles from Caesarea and 10 miles from Jezreel, the ancient name of Maximianopolis being, according to Jerome, "Hadad Rimmon".
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Rumaneh had a population of 548, all Muslim, increasing in the 1931 census to 644, still all Muslim, in 151 houses. In the 1945 statistics, the population of Rummana was 880 Muslims while the total land area was 21,676 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 2,876 dunams were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 10,507 for cereals, while 27 dunams were classified as built-up areas.
