Earthquake damage as a catalyst to abandonment of a Middle Bronze Age settlement: Tel Kabri, Israel

Abstract

For years there has been much speculation surrounding the abandonment of the Middle Bronze Age IIB palace of Tel Kabri, ca. 1700 BCE. There are no weapons, hoards of money and jewelry, or visible evidence for fire, which rules out hostile attack or conquest. There are also no indications of drought or environmental degradation that might have forced the inhabitants to vacate the site, nor mass graveyards to indicate a pandemic. The current study uses micro-geoarchaeological methods to show that the demise of the palace was rapid, with walls and ceilings collapsing at once prior to abandonment. Macroscopic data (stratigraphic and structural) from five excavation seasons were reexamined, showing that at least nine Potential Earthquake Archaeological Effects (PEAEs) are found and associated with the last occupation phase of the site's palace. All lines of evidence point to the possibility that an earthquake damaged the palace, possibly to a point where it was no longer economically viable to repair. This conclusion is compounded by the discovery of a 1-3 m wide trench that cuts through the palace for 30 m, which may be the result of ground shaking or liquefaction caused by an earthquake. This study shows the importance of combining macro-and micro-archaeological methods for the identification of ancient earthquakes, together with the need to evaluate alternative scenarios of climatic, environmental, and economic collapse, as well as human-induced destruction before a seismic event scenario can be proposed.

Human-environmental interactions and seismic activity in a Late Bronze to Early Iron Age settlement center in the southeastern Caucasus

“…Especially naturally fragile drylands (Fletcher et al, 2013) are ideal to investigate such long-term interactions: On the one hand, human societies in drylands are highly affected by even small-scale environmental variations (Schmidt et al, 2011;Balbo et al, 2016), and on the other hand, drylands sensitively react towards small-scale human disturbances (Neff et al, 2008;Suchodoletz et al, 2010;O'Henry et al, 2017;Rosen et al, 2019). Furthermore, given that many drylands are located in tectonically active regions, next to environmental and societal factors also destructive seismic events impacted the local prehistoric societies (Nur and Cline, 2000;Force, 2017;Lazar et al, 2020).…”

Multi‐Segment Earthquake Clustering as Inferred From 36Cl Exposure Dating, the Bet Kerem Fault System, Northern Israel

“…The first event, roughly 16 km northwest of the fault system, damaged a castle near Kibbutz Kabri (Figure 7). This shaking has been interpreted as a seismic event with an age of 3.8–3.7 ka (Lazar et al., 2020). The age of this shaking event aligns with the first activity period of the Bet Kerem fault system (Table 1), indicating that it may have been caused by earthquakes along the Bet Kerem fault system.…”

Appetite for Destruction

“…Detecting disasters like earthquakes may be extremely challenging in the archaeological record, especially when degradable building materials are used in the construction practice. Recent studies have applied an integrated approach for identifying ancient earthquakes, combining macroscopic indicators and supporting evidence from microscopic geoarchaeological techniques, such as micromorphology (Schachner et al 2019;Lazar et al 2020). Recurrent patterns of macroscopic markers have been detected as expected effects of earthquakes observable on the stratigraphic deposits and included in the so-called 'Potential Earthquake Archaeological Effects' (PEAEs) (Jusseret et al 2013).…”

“…The assumption that the conflagration of unit 1 might have been part of the symbolic destruction of specific residential clusters at Alambra is difficult to validate due to the lack of univocal evidence in the analysis of the destruction context. Additionally, the identified macroscopic PEAE markers (e.g., localized fire damage, broken in situ vessels) (Lazar et al 2020.Tab 1) can either be interpreted as the effects of a controlled destruction or the consequences of natural catastrophic events, including earthquakes.…”