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Archaeological record of earthquake ruptures in Tell Ateret, the Dead Sea Fault
Tectonics, 2015
The archaeological Tell Ateret (North Israel), constructed on the active Dead Sea Fault, was intermittently settled for over six millennia. Structures on the Tell that have been offset by earthquake ruptures provide a remarkable record of alternating construction and slip. We excavated the site in order to resolve the geometry and to time the earthquake rupture history back to the earliest settlement. The measurements of faulted archaeological walls are complemented with data from historical documents, numismatic analysis, and geological observations. We report three newly discovered offsets that add to two previously resolved slip events (the 20 May 1202 and 30 October 1759 earthquakes), completing a three millennia archaeoseismic record. The oldest offset measuring at least ~2 m bisected Iron Age IIA fortifications. The second offset, the largest of all five, reaching ~2.5 m, is dated to circa 142 BCE. The third, whose post-Hellenistic date is not determined, is of ~1.5 m, possibly resulting from multiple earthquakes. We constrain the time of the largest offset by a hoard of 45 coins, the latest of which had been minted 143/142 BCE. Indicative pottery and historic texts support the year 143/142 as terminus post-quem of the rupture at this site. These observations, together with a new kinematic approach, show uneven slip distribution in time and variable amounts of slip along the Jordan Gorge segment of the Dead Sea Fault. We suggest, based on previous palaeomagnetic measurements, that distributed deformation west of Tell Ateret can explain the apparent missing slip of 4.5 ± 3.5 m since the Hellenistic times.
Holocene seismic and tectonic activity in the Dead Sea area
Tectonophysics, 1981
. Holocene seismic and tectonic activity in the Dead Sea area. In: R. Freund and Z. Garfunkel (Editors), The Dead Sea Rift. Tectonophysics, 80: 235-254. The Dead Sea is a large, active graben within the Dead Sea rift, which is bounded by two major strike-slip faults, the Jericho and the Arava faults. We investigated the young tectonic activity along the Jericho fault by excavating trenches, up to 3.5 m deep, across its trace. The trenches penetrate through Late Pleistocene and Holocene sediments. We found that a zone, up to 15 m wide, of disturbed sediments exists along the fault. These disturbed sediments provide evidence for two periods of intensive activity or more likely, for two major earthquakes, that occurred during the last 2000 years. The earthquakes are evident in small faults, vertical throw of a few layers, cracks, unconformities and wide fissures. We further documented evidence for recent sinistral shear along the Jericho fault in deformed sediments and damage to an 8th Century palace on a subsidiary fault. We suggest that the two earthquakes may be correlated with the 31 B.C. earthquake and the 748 A.D. earthquake, reported by the ancients. * Present address: Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Three Embarcadero Center, San Fransisco, Calif. 94111 (U.S.A.).
5000 yr of paleoseismicity along the southern Dead Sea fault
Geophysical Journal International, 2015
The 1000-km-long left-lateral Dead Sea fault is a major tectonic structure of the oriental Mediterranean basin, bounding the Arabian Plate to the west. The fault is located in a region with an exceptionally long and rich historical record, allowing to document historical seismicity catalogues with unprecedented level of details. However, if the earthquake time series is well documented, location and lateral extent of past earthquakes remain often difficult to establish, if only based on historical testimonies. We excavated a palaeoseismic trench in a site located in a kilometre-size extensional jog, south of the Dead Sea, in the Wadi Araba. Based on the stratigraphy exposed in the trench, we present evidence for nine earthquakes that produced surface ruptures during a time period spanning 5000 yr. Abundance of datable material allows us to tie the five most recent events to historical earthquakes with little ambiguities, and to constrain the possible location of these historical earthquakes. The events identified at our site are the 1458 C.E., 1212 C.E., 1068 C.E., one event during the 8th century crisis, and the 363 C.E. earthquake. Four other events are also identified, which correlation with historical events remains more speculative. The magnitude of earthquakes is difficult to assess based on evidence at one site only. The deformation observed in the excavation, however, allows discriminating between two classes of events that produced vertical deformation with one order of amplitude difference, suggesting that we could distinguish earthquakes that started/stopped at our site from earthquakes that potentially ruptured most of the Wadi Araba fault. The time distribution of earthquakes during the past 5000 yr is uneven. The early period shows little activity with return interval of ∼500 yr or longer. It is followed by a ∼1500-yr-long period with more frequent events, about every 200 yr. Then, for the past ∼550 yr, the fault has switched back to a quieter mode with no significant earthquake along the entire southern part of the Dead Sea fault, between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. We computed the Coefficient of Variation for our site and three other sites along the Dead Sea fault, south of Lebanon, to compare time distribution of earthquakes at different locations along the fault. With one exception at a site located next to Lake Tiberias, the three other sites are consistent to show some temporal clustering at the scale of few thousands years.
2015. Archaeological record of earthquake ruptures in Tell Ateret, the Dead Sea Fault
The archaeological Tell Ateret (North Israel), constructed on the active Dead Sea Fault, was intermittently settled for over six millennia. Structures on the Tell that have been offset by earthquake ruptures provide a remarkable record of alternating construction and slip. We excavated the site in order to resolve the geometry and to time the earthquake rupture history back to the earliest settlement. The measurements of faulted archaeological walls are complemented with data from historical documents, numismatic analysis, and geological observations. We report three newly discovered offsets that add to two previously resolved slip events (the 20 May 1202 and 30 October 1759 earthquakes), completing a three millennia archaeoseismic record. The oldest offset measuring at least ~2 m bisected Iron Age IIA fortifications. The second offset, the largest of all five, reaching ~2.5 m, is dated to circa 142 BCE. The third, whose post-Hellenistic date is not determined, is of ~1.5 m, possibly resulting from multiple earthquakes. We constrain the time of the largest offset by a hoard of 45 coins, the latest of which had been minted 143/142 BCE. Indicative pottery and historic texts support the year 143/142 as terminus post-quem of the rupture at this site. These observations, together with a new kinematic approach, show uneven slip distribution in time and variable amounts of slip along the Jordan Gorge segment of the Dead Sea Fault. We suggest, based on previous palaeomagnetic measurements, that distributed deformation west of Tell Ateret can explain the apparent missing slip of 4.5 ± 3.5 m since the Hellenistic times.
Evaluation of supposed archaeoseismic damage in Israel
Journal of Archaeological Science, 1978
Studies of ancient seismicity in the Levant are based on the interpretation of biblical, ecclesiastic and historic chronicles, all of which are plagued by exaggeration and misinterpretation. To verify the occurrence of such ancient earth-tremors, archaeological archives in Israel were searched for reports and evidence of ancient catastrophic damage, attributable to earthquakes. Literature and response to questionnaires revealed about 20 sites at which features of ancient destruction were assigned a seismic origin. The actual field evidence included horizons of total destruction, and mainly features of fracturing (joints, fissures, cracks and faults), tilting and subsidence, directed collapse and parallel alignments of fallen columns and masonry. About 75 % of these sites lie within or near to the Dead Sea-Jordan Rift, confirming the seismogenic nature of this zone. In spite of their significance and usefulness, the archaeoseismic data cannot be employed as an entirely independent technique for the verification of ancient chronicles and the study of past seismicity. In addition to problems of operator's bias, and bias due to historic information, the critical examination of field evidence cited in support of ancient seismicity has shown that the individual features are difficult to distinguish from features of damage due to poor construction and adverse geotechnical effects. It is essential therefore, in the description of ancient damage and of consideration of its origin, to maintain a proper balance between geological, geomorphological and geotechnical factors on one hand, and historic, anthropogeographic and archaeological factors on the other.
Prehistoric Seismic Basin Effects in the Dead Sea Pull-apart
Site effect is the specific response to earthquakes that is characteristic of the attributes of a site. The two-and three-dimensional shape of sedimentary basins may constitute an important factor of site effects. In sediment-filled basins, in which a lens of soft sediments overlies rocks with higher seismic velocities, two-dimensional resonance patterns may prolong the duration of shaking, and induce a large amplification, much larger than the one predicted from the corresponding one-dimensional analysis. The main source of these phenomena is the development within the basins of surface waves, including the vertically and elliptically polarized Rayleigh waves, and horizontally polarized Love waves.
Journal of Seismology, 2006
The archaeological site of Qasr Tilah, in the Wadi Araba, Jordan is located on the northern Wadi Araba fault segment of the Dead Sea Transform. The site contains a Roman-period fort, a late Byzantine–Early Umayyad birkeh (water reservoir) and aqueduct, and agricultural fields. The birkeh and aqueduct are left-laterally offset by coseismic slip across the northern Wadi Araba fault. Using paleoseismic and archaeological evidence collected from a trench excavated across the fault zone, we identified evidence for four ground-rupturing earthquakes. Radiocarbon dating from key stratigraphic horizons and relative dating using potsherds constrains the dates of the four earthquakes from the sixth to the nineteenth centuries. Individual earthquakes were dated to the seventh, ninth and eleventh centuries. The fault strand that slipped during the most recent event (MRE) extends to just below the modern ground surface and juxtaposes alluvial-fan sediments that lack in datable material with the modern ground surface, thus preventing us from dating the MRE except to constrain the event to post-eleventh century. These data suggest that the historical earthquakes of 634 or 659/660, 873, 1068, and 1546 probably ruptured this fault segment.
Archaeology, history, and geology of the A.D. 749 earthquake, Dead Sea transform
Geology, 2003
Archaeology, history, and geology of the A.D. 749 earthquake, Dead Sea Email alerting services cite this article to receive free e-mail alerts when new articles www.gsapubs.org/cgi/alerts click Subscribe to subscribe to Geology www.gsapubs.org/subscriptions/ click Permission request to contact GSA http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/copyrt.htm#gsa click viewpoint. Opinions presented in this publication do not reflect official positions of the Society. positions by scientists worldwide, regardless of their race, citizenship, gender, religion, or political article's full citation. GSA provides this and other forums for the presentation of diverse opinions and articles on their own or their organization's Web site providing the posting includes a reference to the science. This file may not be posted to any Web site, but authors may post the abstracts only of their unlimited copies of items in GSA's journals for noncommercial use in classrooms to further education and to use a single figure, a single table, and/or a brief paragraph of text in subsequent works and to make GSA, employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or further requests to