Holocene evolution of the Haifa Bay area, Israel, and its influence on ancient tell settlements

Abstract

The geographical evolution of Haifa Bay and Zevulun Plain, Israel, from the late Pleistocene to the Holocene, is based on detailed analysis of drilled cores. At the beginning of the Holocene the Bay area was still under terrestrial conditions. Only about 9500 to 9000 cal. yr BP, when sea level rose to about 35 Á 30 m below present sea level (b.s.l.), did Nile-derived sand start to bypass the Carmel headland and Haifa Bay come into existence as a morphological feature. Between 8000 and 7150 cal. yr BP, when sea level was 14 Á10 m b.s.l., the invading sea crossed the present-day coastline. At about 6800 to 6600 cal. yr BP sea level rose to about 5 m b.s.l. and flooded the Zevulun Plain up to 2 km inland, and the River Qishon estuary up to 4 km inland. It is still unknown exactly when the sea reached its maximum penetration inland but later, about 4000 years ago, the coastline in the research area was still east of the present-day coast, up to 3 km in the Zevulun Plain and 4.8 km in the River Qishon estuary. When the coastline started to retreat westward, the reclamation was followed by intensive deposition of shallow marine sand and aeolian dunes, while to the east, different wetland conditions developed. The archaeological data indicate that during the Early Bronze Age I and Early Bronze Age II, dated to between 5600 and 4700 cal. yr BP, and even later, during the Middle Bronze Age II period, about 4600 to 3500 cal. yr BP, the coastline was still east of the presentday coast, but it never actually reached the bases of most of the tells, as has been suggested, except for Tel Akko

Late-Pleistocene evolution of the continental shelf of central Israel, a case study from Hadera

“…Archaeological observations from the coast of Israel indicate that sea levels continued to rise until~6 ka to~7 ka when rates of sea level rise slowed considerably and the shoreline was located~3 km offshore from its current location. Sea level almost reached its present elevation at~4 ka (Sivan et al, 2001(Sivan et al, , 2004bAnzidei et al, 2011;Toker et al, 2012), and the coastline prograded to reach its present location at~3 ka (Kadosh et al, 2004;Cohen-Seffer et al, 2005;Zviely et al, 2006Zviely et al, , 2007Porat et al, 2008;Sivan et al, 2011).…”

“…While the topmost surface of the Pleistocene Kurkar unit has been chronologically constrained to between~101 and~50 ka (Engelmann et al, 2001;Frechen et al, 2004b;Sivan and Porat, 2004;Sivan et al, 2004a;Zviely et al, 2006;Roskin et al, 2015) there is no spatial pattern to the varying ages of the Kurkar ridges and the relationships between them and former sea-level changes have still not been properly established (Sivan and Porat, 2004;Mauz et al, 2013). Most of our understanding of the Kurkar, its chronology and morphology, comes from studies carried out on exposed terrestrial outcrops, leaving the extent and ages of the offshore submerged Kurkar mostly unknown.…”

“…The Nile-sediment fluxes responsible for the Kurkar ridges have continued to operate throughout the Holocene and are still dominant today (Ronen et al, 2005;Zviely et al, 2006). Currently, the rates of sand supplied by wind-and wave-induced longshore currents gradually decrease northwards and end in the Haifa Bay depositional sink (Fig.…”

“…Currently, the rates of sand supplied by wind-and wave-induced longshore currents gradually decrease northwards and end in the Haifa Bay depositional sink (Fig. 1a;Inman and Jenkins, 1984;Zviely et al, 2006). The initiation and timing of current wind-induced coastal sand build-up is based on luminescence and radiocarbon ages of in situ land snails and relative age estimations from archaeological relicts.…”

“…These sediments include additional Nilotic derived aeolian sediments which pedogenized under different climatic conditions (Yaalon, 1997;Gvirtzman et al, 1998;Gvirtzman and Wieder, 2001) to orange silty sand and brown clayey silty sand (locally known as Hamra and Brown-Paleosol units respectively). These soils are covered by wetland dark silty clays and/or aeolian sand (Gvirtzman et al, 1998;Kadosh et al, 2004;Sivan and Porat, 2004;Sivan et al, 2004a, Zviely et al, 2006.…”