Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering

Living Edition
| Editors: Michael Beer, Ioannis A. Kougioumtzoglou, Edoardo Patelli, Ivan Siu-Kui Au

Archaeoseismology

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36197-5_29-2
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Synonyms

Archaeological seismicity; Earthquake archaeology; Seismic archaeology

Introduction

In 1991 an international conference was held in Athens (Greece), marking the beginning of the modern research field of archaeoseismology, described as “the study of ancient earthquakes from the complementary standpoints of their social, cultural, historical and physical effect” (Stiros and Jones 1996). Besides the term archaeoseismology, also the term seismic archaeology was introduced to emphasize the use of archaeological methods in the quest to better understand the effects of earthquakes on historical buildings and archaeological remains. Moreover, in analogy with historical seismicity, also the term archaeological seismicity was suggested.

Archaeoseismology can thus be defined as the interdisciplinary study of ancient earthquakes through evidence in the archaeological record, such as destruction layers, structural damage to man-made constructions, cultural piercing features, indications of...

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Geodynamics and Geofluids Research GroupKU LeuvenLeuvenBelgium