Poseidon's Horses: Plate Tectonics and Earthquake Storms in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean

Recent behavior of the North Anatolian Fault: Insights from an integrated paleoseismological data set

“…Table A1 summarizes published references to historical earthquakes that may be associated with surface rupture along the NAF [Ambraseys, 2002[Ambraseys, , 1970Ambraseys and Finkel, 1987, 1995Ambraseys and Jackson, 1998;Ambraseys, 2001;Guidoboni et al, 1994;Guidoboni and Comastri, 2005;Nur and Cline, 2000;Nur and Burgess, 2008;Stein et al, 1997;Tibi et al, 2001]. Many of the reported earthquakes come from near Erzincan in the east and Istanbul in the west, while the records from the central portion of the NAF are sparser.…”

Archaeoseismology: Methodological issues and procedure

“…In order to define the procedural aspects, we divided the investigations which are necessarily conditioned by in situ activities from those made in laboratories, archives and libraries and which are mainly related to the historical research. The list of analyses results from an assimilation, re-proposition and update of lists already produced in previous methodological works (e.g., Karcz and Kafri 1978;Stiros 1996;Nur and Cline 2000). The different sources of information summarised in Table 1 are discussed in the next sections.…”

“…Typical earthquake effects on manufacts (e.g., Stiros 1996;Korjenkov and Mazor 1999a, b;Nur and Cline 2000, for the archaeological features; e.g., Doglioni et al 1994, for churches of various ages) are: (1) cross fissuring in the vertical plane (generally developing from the corners of windows or doors) due to the action of shear forces; (2) corner expulsion due to the orthogonal motion of walls ( Figure 2a); (3) horizontal and independent motion, lateral and rotational, of single blocks within a wall (generally well visible in walls made of similarly shaped blocks, with rectangular section); (4) height reduction due to vertical crashing; (5) rupture or motion of the arch piers and internal collapse of the keystones; (6) wall tilting and distortion; (7) rotation of pillars or elements of pillars and drums of columns around vertical axes ( Figure 2b). However, some of these deformations usually observed after damaging earthquakes may also originate without dynamic excitation (Karcz et al 1977) and finding one piece of evidence only (or at a single edifice only) cannot be considered conclusive (Stiros 1996;Mazor and Korjenkov 2001).…”

“…For these reasons, the identification of buildings which have been simultaneously damaged in several locations in periods of political stability (line 11 of Table 1) or reviewing published or unpublished archaeological material on this aspect (line 1, column 2 of Table 1) may be a logical method to test the archaeoseismic hypothesis (e.g., Galadini and Galli 2004;Guidoboni et al 2000;Nur and Cline 2000;Jones and Stiros 2000;Stiros 2001). …”

“…Since 2002, a working group 'Archaeoseismology' is active within the European Seismological Commission. However, though the methodological aspects have been investigated in a number of publications (e.g., Karcz and Kafri 1978;Rapp 1986;Nikonov 1988;Santoro Bianchi 1996;Stiros 1996;Korjenkov and Mazor 1999a;Guidoboni 2000;Nur and Cline 2000;Noller 2001), this interdisciplinary branch of the seismological science has so far not had a development comparable to that of other related disciplines (e.g., historical seismology and paleoseismology). This is mainly due to: (1) the absence of continuous, systematic and combined efforts for the refinement and extension of the methodological background of this research field; (2) the necessity to involve, in most cases, a wide range of experts (archaeologists and historians specialized in specific fields, periods and areas, geologists, geophysicists, and engineers) dealing with the range of topics usually included in the archaeoseismological research; (3) the problem that what may usually be regarded as signs of an earthquake (e.g., widespread collapses, sudden abandonment of settlements, restorations) may have causes other than earthquakes or, inversely, (4) that various natural processes (e.g., landslides, floods, soil settlement) or even human activities (e.g., wars, revolutions) may have effects similar to those of earthquakes.…”