The collapse of Bronze Age civilizations c.1200 BC remains a persistent riddle in Eastern Mediterranean archaeology. Earthquakes, attacks of the Sea Peoples, climatic deterioration, and socio-political unrest are among the most frequently suggested causes for this phenomenon. In the last issue of Seismological Research Letters (January/February 2013), Manuel Sintubin and myself attempt to retrace the origins of the idea according to which earthquakes may have caused the demise of Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean societies. The article features reproductions of unpublished archival documents held by the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (Nicosia). The free-access version of the paper can be found here. Happy reading!
The latest issue of the Seismological Review Letters (SRL) contains some interesting papers on strong earthquakes, seismicity, and tsunamis. Here’s a list of papers that could be especially interesting for the paleoseismicity community: more
The deadline for the EGU 2013 meeting is approaching, so if you want to submit an abstract or if you plan to apply for a grant, now is the time. I would like to draw your attention to the following sessions again, which are the closest to earthquake geology, I think. Deadlines are November 30 for Support Applications and January 9 for receipt of Abstracts. more
The final program of the 3rd INQUA-IGCP 567 Workshop to be held at Morelia (Mexico) from 19 – 23 November 2012 is out now!
Download the pdf here: PROGRAM MORELIA 2012 INQUA WORKSHOP
Check Acambay1912.org for latest news!
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Next year’s European Geosciences Union General Assembly will be held in Vienna, Austria, from 07 – 12 April. As always there will be hundreds of sessions and thousands of scientists, so I’ve put together some recommendations based on my own interest. However, there will be some things that you’ll like, too. more
Olivier Lacombe, Damien Delvaux, Giulio Viola and myself are inviting contributions for session TS9.5 “Advances in paleostress/strain reconstructions in tectonic studies : methods, applications, perspectives” at the 2013 EGU General assembly (Vienna, 07 – 12 April 2013).
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Let’s see, this is my 1st post here, thanks again for the invitation. Today, an interesting story circulated through mass and science media. The article by Kremer et al. published yesterday in Nature Geoscience presents geophysical and sedimentological evidence of potential tsunamis in the rather exotic environment of Lake Geneva. This phenomenon is not new at all and has been investigated by others before, but I pretty much share the authors conclusion, that the hazard of tsunami-like events in continental lakes deserves higher attention in the future.
The preliminary program of the 3rd INQUA-IGCP 567 Workshop to be held at Morelia (Mexico) from 19 – 23 November 2012 is out now. This program is subject to very minor modifications regarding social events, etc.. The scientific program will be the definitive one, but might be subject to late unforeseen inconveniences.
Please note that some dates like the field trip have changed! more
Two new tsunami papers have been published recently, and I am happy to be co-author of one of them. In Hoffmann et al. 2012 we report on our observations along the NE Omani coast between Fins and Sur. We found a ridge of imbricated boulders parallel to the coast, but in heights of several meters above m.s.l. on top of a cliff and dozens of meters inland. Also, extremely large blocks clearly stemming from the cliff were found. We used LiDAR to determine the mass of very large blocks (up to 40 t) and found this method to result in far lower weights than estimated with the classical method. more
The Sparta Fault in Greece is marked by one of the most impressive mountain fronts I’ve ever seen. A huge (yes, huge!) fault scarp has developed, traceable for kilometers; the fault itself is more than 60 km long. Ancient Sparta has been devastated by the last known major (M>7) earthquake that happened at this fault in 464 BC. Now, Papanikolaou et al. have published new data on this fault. They examined how paramaters like throw, segmentation, and catchments vary along strike and created a new seismic hazard map, showing a site-specific long-term recurrence interval of ~1.8 ka (+/- 450 a). more
