New project: ArMedEa – Archaeology of the Medieval Earthquakes in Europe (1000-1550 AD)

An interesting new project aims on a better understanding of ancient earthquakes in Europe. ArMedEa – Archaeology of the Medieval Earthquakes in Europe (1000-1550 AD) is dedicated to increase our knowledge of medieval seismic events. The 2-years project based at Durham University will focus on archaeological information on quakes, tsunamis and earthquake-induced mass movements. ArMedEa is run by Paolo Forlin (supervised by Chris Gerrard and Dave Petley). The project has just started and already has its own blog. According to Paolo Forlin, main aims of the project will be a GIS database of medieval seismic events, risk maps of ancient Europe, case studies and an analysis of how our ancestors dealt with seismic hazard. The project will combine geological and archaeological information as well as remote sensing techniques.

Sounds like a very nice story and I will closely follow the progress.

• Project’s blog: http://armedea.wordpress.com/
• ArMedEa on Twitter: @ArMedEa_project

If you are interested in ancient European earthquakes, make sure to check AHEAD – the European archive of historical earthquake data. It’s a great ressource and was recently covered by a paper in SRL: Locati et al., 2014. The AHEAD Portal: A Gateway to European Historical Earthquake Data.

By the way: The Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University also has its own blog. Highly recommended.

Offset column drums at the Poseidon temple, Cape Sounion, Greece. Not medieval, and maybe not even an earthquake (Stefanou et al., 2011), but still beautiful.

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