Ancient earthquake may have caused destruction of Canaanite palace at
Tel Kabri

Date:
September 11, 2020
Source:
George Washington University
Summary:
Researchers have uncovered new evidence that an earthquake may have
caused the destruction and abandonment of a flourishing Canaanite
palatial site about 3,700 years ago.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A team of Israeli and American researchers funded by grants from
the National Geographic Society and the Israel Science Foundation has
uncovered new evidence that an earthquake may have caused the destruction
and abandonment of a flourishing Canaanite palatial site about 3,700
years ago.


==========================================================================
The group made the discovery at the 75-acre site of Tel Kabri in Israel,
which contains the ruins of a Canaanite palace and city that dates back to approximately 1900-1700 B.C. The excavations, located on land belonging
to Kibbutz Kabri in the western Galilee region, are co-directed by Assaf
Yasur- Landau, a professor of Mediterranean archaeology at the University
of Haifa, and Eric Cline, a professor of classics and anthropology at
the George Washington University.

"We wondered for several years what had caused the sudden destruction and abandonment of the palace and the site, after centuries of flourishing occupation," Yasur-Landau said. "A few seasons ago, we began to uncover
a trench which runs through part of the palace, but initial indications suggested that it was modern, perhaps dug within the past few decades or
a century or two at most. But then, in 2019, we opened up a new area and
found that the trench continued for at least 30 meters, with an entire
section of a wall that had fallen into it in antiquity, and with other
walls and floors tipping into it on either side." According to Michael
Lazar, the lead author of the study, recognizing past earthquakes can be extremely challenging in the archaeological record, especially at sites
where there isn't much stone masonry and where degradable construction materials like sun-dried mud bricks and wattle-and-daub were used
instead. At Tel Kabri, however, the team found both stone foundations
for the bottom part of the walls and mud-brick superstructures above.

"Our studies show the importance of combining macro- and
micro-archaeological methods for the identification of ancient
earthquakes," he said. "We also needed to evaluate alternative scenarios, including climatic, environmental and economic collapse, as well as
warfare, before we were confident in proposing a seismic event scenario."
The researchers could see areas where the plaster floors appeared warped,
walls had tilted or been displaced, and mud bricks from the walls and
ceilings had collapsed into the rooms, in some cases rapidly burying
dozens of large jars.

"It really looks like the earth simply opened up and everything on either
side of it fell in," Cline said. "It's unlikely that the destruction was
caused by violent human activity because there are no visible signs of
fire, no weapons such as arrows that would indicate a battle, nor any
unburied bodies related to combat. We could also see some unexpected
things in other rooms of the palace, including in and around the wine
cellar that we excavated a few years ago." In 2013, the team discovered
40 jars within a single storage room of the palace during an expedition
also supported by a National Geographic Society grant. An organic
residue analysis conducted on the jars indicated that they held wine;
it was described at the time as the oldest and largest wine cellar yet discovered in the Near East. Since then, the team has found four more
such storage rooms and at least 70 more jars, all buried by the collapse
of the building.

"The floor deposits imply a rapid collapse rather than a slow accumulation
of degraded mud bricks from standing walls or ceilings of an abandoned structure," Ruth Shahack-Gross, a professor of geoarchaeology at the
University of Haifa and a co-author on the study, said. "The rapid
collapse, and the quick burial, combined with the geological setting of
Tel Kabri, raises the possibility that one or more earthquakes could
have destroyed the walls and the roof of the palace without setting
it on fire." The investigators are hopeful that their methodological
approach can be applied at other archaeological sites, where it can serve
to test or strengthen cases of possible earthquake damage and destruction.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by George_Washington_University. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Michael Lazar, Eric H. Cline, Roey Nickelsberg, Ruth Shahack-Gross,
Assaf
Yasur-Landau. Earthquake damage as a catalyst to abandonment of a
Middle Bronze Age settlement: Tel Kabri, Israel. PLOS ONE, 2020;
15 (9): e0239079 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239079 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200911200008.htm

--- up 2 weeks, 4 days, 6 hours, 50 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1337:3/111)