Abstract Compressional tectonic inversions are classically represented in 2D brittle failure mode (BFM) plots that illustrate the change in differential stress ( σ 1 − σ 3 ) versus the pore-fluid pressure during orogenic shortening. In these BFM plots, the tectonic switch between extension and compression occurs at a differential stress state of zero. However, mostly anisotropic conditions are present in the Earth's crust, making isotropic stress conditions highly questionable. In this study, theoretical 3D stress-state reconstructions are proposed to illustrate the complexity of triaxial stress transitions during compressional inversion of Andersonian stress regimes. These reconstructions are based on successive late burial and early tectonic quartz veins which reflect early Variscan tectonic inversion in the Rhenohercynian foreland fold-and-thrust belt (High-Ardenne Slate Belt, Belgium, Germany). This theoretical exercise predicts that, no matter the geometry of the basin or the orientation of shortening, a transitional ‘wrench’ tectonic regime should always occur between extension and compression. To date, this intermediate regime has never been observed in structures in a shortened basin affected by tectonic inversion. Our study implies that stress transitions are therefore more complex than classically represented in 2D. Ideally, a transitional ‘wrench’ regime should be implemented in BFM plots at the switch between the extensional and compressional regimes.

This paper discusses the relationship between dynamic landscape change resulting from tectonic activity and patterns of human land use and human development. Archaeological studies of human settlement in its wider landscape setting usually focus on climate change as the principal environmental driver of change in the physical features of the landscape, even on the longer time scales of early human evolution. Tectonic processes are usually assumed to operate too slowly to be of any significance except as the source of occasional disruptive events, or at best to have some indirect effect on climate change as a result of long-term regional uplift. Herein, examples are shown from Europe and Africa to illustrate the ways in which changes of significance to human settlement can occur at a range of geographical scales and on time scales that range from lifetimes to tens of millennia. We emphasize that these changes are not always or necessarily destructive in their impact but can also create and sustain attractive conditions for human settlement and that these conditions have exercised powerful selection pressures on human development.

The close spatial relation between ancient civilizations and active tectonic boundaries is robust in the Eastern Hemisphere but counterintuitive given the seismic disadvantages it implies. Explanations for the observation remain debatable, and no single explanation seems sufficient. Some possibly important factors are unrelated to seismicity, e.g., the influence of tectonism on local water resources and on resource diversity. When examined on finer spatial scales, the relation is still robust. A quantifiable influence of tectonism on civilization locations even along Mediterranean shores is suggested by their distribution. The stronger links of tectonism with derivative civilizations suggest a role of ancient trade connections. Several clues point to cultural response as an important ingredient in the dynamics resulting in the spatial relation. These are: correlation between static character and location of civilizations relative to tectonic locus; archaeologic and historic records of accelerated cultural (especially religious) change following tectonic events; and evidence that the spatial relation evolves through time via trade goods and routes. Archaeoseismology is in a key position to provide additional clues to this paradoxical relation in at least three ways: (1) providing detail on evolving societal response; (2) determining the most pertinent tectonic styles; and (3) determining the role of seismicity in Neolithic cultures that eventually became civilizations.

Mansurah, the eighth-century Arabic capital of Sindh province, Pakistan, flourished for a mere 200 yr. Its destruction by an earthquake ca. 980 A.D. was first proposed by archaeologists who reported the discovery of crushed skeletons amid dateable coins found among its rubble. An abrupt natural death to the city was challenged by others who noted that the absence of wood or valuables was consistent with the city being sacked and systematically looted. The recent discovery of four decorated door knockers beneath the collapsed walls of one of the largest structures in Mansurah, however, reopens the case for an earthquake, since an invading army would almost certainly have removed them as booty. We suggest that an earthquake not only destroyed the city and its suburbs (intensity ≈ VIII), but resulted in postseismic avulsion of the river on which its citizens depended for agriculture, sanitation, and trade. Since natural levees have been observed in India to collapse in intensity VII shaking, it is unnecessary to invoke coseismic uplift as a requirement for upstream river avulsion. The absence in the past two centuries of large earthquakes in the region has resulted in central Sindh being depicted as a region of low seismic hazard, yet in 1668, in the same province, an earthquake destroyed nearby Samawani and also initiated avulsion of the Indus. A case can be made for reevaluating the five millennia of archaeological ruins in Pakistan to establish a long-term view of seismicity unavailable from the short instrumental record.

The prime cause of the relocation of one of the first villages founded in Venezuela by Spaniards in the early seventeenth century was likely motivated by earthquakes. San Antonio de Mucuñó, located in the Merida Andes ~200 km south-southeast of Maracaibo, was subjected to the effects of landslides triggered by a series of seismic events that took place in and around the year 1674. Historical documents, the geological and seismo-tectonic setting, and paleoseismic data support the conclusion that the earthquakes of 1674 occurred on the nearby, seismically active Bocono fault.

This work sheds light on one of the most important earthquakes in Venezuelan history. At 16:07 on Holy Thursday, 26 March 1812, Caracas and the surrounding province of Venezuela suffered a very destructive earthquake. The earthquake occurred at a time of great political, economic, and social upheaval, with the beginning of the republican revolution and the Spanish royalist military response. Within this historical context of conflict, documentary information may be biased and subjective. This chapter is a methodological and epistemological analysis of the 1812 earthquake damage from letters and manuscripts and an interpretation of the social impact of the earthquake within ideological, subjective, and political context. The widespread destruction of the city of Caracas was heterogeneous in its distribution. Damage was determined largely by the differences in the construction style and quality and by the maintenance status of the building. Based on analyses of three funeral books from the era, the number of earthquake victims in Caracas in 1812 may have been close to 2000. This value is lower than regional estimates of the death toll.

This paper examines the development of a crisis over a critical military-security issue raised by the severe earthquakes that destroyed defensive structures throughout Nur al-Din's Sultanate of Syria, the Crusader Principality of Antioch, and the County of Tripoli. The earthquakes that struck Syria in 1157 and 1170 are well documented by contemporary historians. The accounts of destruction concentrate on the collapse of many fortresses and town walls. This circumstance strongly influenced regional politics and military affairs. While the first earthquake led to an increase in tension and a rise in violence between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Muslim Sultanate in Syria, the destruction wrought by the 1170 earthquake forced the two sides to accept a formal peace treaty. The two case studies presented here examine the impact of earthquake destruction on decision makers in the complex international arena of medieval Syria.

The earliest use of seismological observation to identify and date archaeological sites in western Crete was attempted by Captain T.A.B. Spratt in the late nineteenth century. Since then, the development of the subdiscipline of archaeoseismology has offered a great deal to our understanding of western Crete, especially regarding major sites such as Phalasarna and Kissamos. This paper is a review and summary of archaeoseismology in western Crete, presenting the archaeoseismological and excavation evidence from Phalasarna and Kissamos. It also presents evidence from other archaeological sites in western Crete and expresses the potential the region has for future archaeoseismological research.

Earthquake archaeology developed in Japan simultaneously with that in the Mediterranean in the mid-1980s. By 1996, evidence of earthquake occurrence had been documented at 378 sites throughout the archipelago. The main features identified include various results of liquefaction, faults, landslips, and surface cracking. This evidence differs greatly from the standard Mediterranean focus on building damage, and the reasons for the very different natures of archaeoseismology in these world regions are explained herein. This article recounts the development of this new subfield, inspired by the interest of geomorphologist Sangawa Akira and taken to its most recent advances in identifying soft-sediment deformation structures by geoarchaeologist Matsuda Jun-ichirō. The evidence of earthquake activity at archaeological sites can be matched with earthquakes caused by either active fault movement or subduction. The historical record of earthquake occurrence, already documented back to 599 C.E., is extended into the prehistorical record through relative dating of artifacts and features on archaeological sites. Both the identification and the dating of the archaeological evidence of earthquakes can be challenged, though the “territorial approach” gives the data a significance that is not achieved through analysis of single sites.

The field of archaeoseismology has been plagued by a persistent problem. The problem has been the integration of several lines of evidence to produce a holistic conclusion without entering into a situation of circular reasoning, wherein the sources are used to build on each other without foundation. The four main sources of evidence are historical texts, epigraphy, archaeology, and geology. Any seismic event may appear in any or all of them, but only the most extreme events in fortuitous locations would be expected to appear in all four. This paper uses some aspects of the interpretation of the 551 C.E. earthquake in the Levant to illustrate how this circular reasoning can develop, and how it tends to corrupt the different lines of evidence. We conclude with a suggested new approach, making the database of regional seismic events both more specific and more complete.

Srinagar, the capital city of Kashmir, has been shaken numerous times by earthquakes in the past millennium, most recently by damaging earthquakes in 1885 (M 6.2, 30 km to the west) and 2005 (M 7.6, 200 km to the west) with estimated EMS (European Macroseismic Scale) intensity VI–VII. Earthquakes in Kashmir in earlier historical times are known only from fragmentary archival sources. We present and analyze unique, repeat photographs of the Pandrethan Temple near Srinagar, which we conclude can provide clues to the severity of nineteenth-century earthquakes. Photos taken in 1868 and 1885 and recently show that the temple, a 5.5-m-square masonry-block structure constructed ca. A.D. 920, was undamaged by these two earthquakes. We conclude that displaced blocks visible in the earliest extant photograph are the result of stronger shaking in the past, the most probable causal earthquake being in 1828. Considering the fragility of the structure, we conclude that anything greater than EMS intensity IX would have caused structural collapse. We thus conclude that Pandrethan has not experienced EMS intensity greater than VIII in the past 200 yr, and possibly not in the past millennium.

Civilizations have existed in the proximity of the Indus River Valley regions of modern Pakistan and India from at least 3000 B.C. onward. Geographically, the region encompasses a swath of the Makran coast, the alluvial plain and delta of the Indus River, and the Runn of Kachchh. The regional tectonic setting is controlled by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates and the subduction of the Arabian plate beneath the Eurasian plate. Earthquakes have undoubtedly struck many ancient sites, but finding their footprint in a riparian environment represents a challenge for archaeoseismology. However, some insight into seismoarchaeological indicators can be gleaned from examining the earthquake effects produced by historical infrequent large-magnitude events that have occurred in the region. Studies of these earthquakes emphasize the importance of repeated reconstructions, direct faulting, river damming from seismic uplift, and coastal elevation change as indicators of past earthquakes. Examples of past earthquake effects are presented for Banbhore in the Indus Delta, Brahmanabad, and the Harappan sites of Kalibangan and Dholavira. Future hermeneutic investigations in the region need to incorporate a seismological/tectonic perspective and not rely solely on serendipity.