Defining Earthquakes and identifying their consequences in North Central Crete during the Old and New Palace Periods. (original) (raw)
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A Note οn the Impacts of the 1810 Seismic Sequence on Crete
Bulletin of the Geological Society of Greece
An intermediate depth earthquake sequence with an unusually strong aftershock hit Crete in 1810 and was felt in a very broad area. This seismic sequence was believed to have caused a death toll of about 2000-3000 and destroyed a major part of houses in the wider Heraklion area. In this article we present an unpublished note for this earthquake sequence from the memoirs of Frangiskos Limbritis, military and political personality in Crete, and analyze certain other notes from Crete and conclude that the death toll in Heraklion which was mainly affected was of the order of 300 and that structural damage was smaller than what believed in the past and was mostly rapidly repaired, especially in the meizoseismal area which roughly covers the present-day Heraklion prefecture (max intensities VIII-IX).
Late Minoan (LM) IIIB (∼1300-1200 B.C.) represents a crucial period in the history of Bronze Age Crete, heralding the transition to the Iron Age through a wave of site destruction and abandonment. According to the traditional view, earthquakes may have played a significant role in these events. A new archaeoseismological approach is proposed to test this hypothesis and to attribute destruction and abandonment to earthquakes. Potential earthquake archaeological effects (PEAEs) are defined and documented at LM IIIB sites. Synchronisms of PEAEs between sites are based on ceramic evidence. The reliability of the PEAEs is furthermore assessed using empirical ground-motion relationships defined for three types of earthquake mechanisms that can be considered to occur in the seismotectonic context of Crete:
Man the measure- Earthquakes as depositional agents in Minoan Crete
Université catholique de Louvain 2 Man the measure: Earthquakes as depositional agents in Minoan Crete Seismology has developed two approaches to measuring earthquakes, one represented by the Moment Magnitude and Richter scales and the other by the Modified Mercalli scale. The Moment Magnitude and Richter scales i are the most well known, and provide a robust assessment of the strength of a quake in the earth. They are based on the mathematical analysis and expression of data compiled by mechanical sensors. The Mercalli scale is a wholly different kind of measurement, based largely on the perceived or postulated impact of the event on human beings and their immediate environment. ii Obviously, the two relate, but the nature of that relationship is not straightforward.
Journal of seismology, 2001
The study of numerous archaeological excavations permits us to conclude that shortly after AD 355-361, the wealthy Roman town of Kisamos in western Crete was affected by a devastating earthquake (minimum intensity XI), which left many of the town's inhabitants buried under the ruins. This earthquake can be related to the July 21, 365 earthquake (M> 8), which was associated with a great tsunami, and was probably responsible for up to 9 m uplift of Western Crete; it probably resulted from the reactivation of a major thrust fault along the Hellenic Arc. The archaeological stratigraphy of Kisamos between circa AD 50 and AD 650 testifies to two other, smallscale stratigraphic discontinuities that may be related to two other smaller earthquakes, which produced 10-20 cm of coastal subsidence in AD 46-66 and in circa AD 270. There is evidence for a tsunami associated with the AD 46-66 earthquake, which agrees with sedimentological data from the nearby ancient harbour of Phalasarna, which was uplifted about 6.5 m in AD 365. The following evidence indicates that Western Crete is not seismically quiescent, as previously believed on the basis of historical data, but that it has been affected by very strong, AD 365-type earthquakes followed by relatively quiescence periods, that were at least several thousand years long:
Unearthing Earthquakes in the Sienese “Crete”
The Val d'Orcia is one of the latest Italian entries (2004) of the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its distinctive landscape of rolling chalk hills (the Crete), shaped in the 14th and 15th centuries to reflect an idealized model of good governance, and celebrated in the paintings of the Sienese school, has become an icon of the Renaissance that profoundly influenced the development of landscape thinking worldwide. Preserving the cultural wealth embodied in this corner of Tuscany is also a matter of assessing its seismic hazard correctly. As a first step toward this end, we revised the local seismic history. According to the current national catalogue, the Crete are a lowseismicity area intervening between two earthquake clusters centered on Siena (north) and Mount Amiata (south); the local earthquakes on record are very few, with middle to low epicentral intensities and none earlier than the second half of 17th century. However, the fortuitous discovery of a recent (1802) damaging earthquake unrecorded by any of the extant catalogues suggested that the current interpretation was more likely to derive from the little interest shown in the area having by previous studies rather than from an actual lack of data. By retrieving the memory of several forgotten damaging earthquakes (from 1449 onwards) and increasing the data set of the already known events, our study does significantly improve the Crete seismic history.
2006
The Val d'Orcia is one of the latest Italian entries (2004) of the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its distinctive landscape of rolling chalk hills (the Crete), shaped in the 14th and 15th centuries to reflect an idealized model of good governance, and celebrated in the paintings of the Sienese school, has become an icon of the Renaissance that profoundly influenced the development of landscape thinking worldwide. Preserving the cultural wealth embodied in this corner of Tuscany is also a matter of assessing its seismic hazard correctly. As a first step toward this end, we revised the local seismic history. According to the current national catalogue, the Crete are a lowseismicity area intervening between two earthquake clusters centered on Siena (north) and Mount Amiata (south); the local earthquakes on record are very few, with middle to low epicentral intensities and none earlier than the second half of 17th century. However, the fortuitous discovery of a recent (1802) damaging earthquake unrecorded by any of the extant catalogues suggested that the current interpretation was more likely to derive from the little interest shown in the area having by previous studies rather than from an actual lack of data. By retrieving the memory of several forgotten damaging earthquakes (from 1449 onwards) and increasing the data set of the already known events, our study does significantly improve the Crete seismic history.
Quaternary International, 2010
An up to 9 m uplift of western Crete, a cluster of coastal uplifts in the East Mediterranean radiocarbon dated approximately w1500 BP, as well as historical and archaeological data are evidence for major, although poorly documented seismic destruction on a nearly-Mediterranean scale in the 4th to 5th c. AD, including the destruction of the Nile Delta in Egypt by a tsunami in AD365. These data represent parts of a puzzle for historians, archaeologists, geologists and seismologists.