An ancient earthquake may have destroyed the Canaanite palace at Tell Kabri

IMAGE: An aerial view showing the Southern Storage Complex (SSC), the Northern Storage Complex (NSC; dashed blue box) and the trench (dashed red lines) View more

Credit: Eric Klein / GW

WASHINGTON (September 11, 2020) – 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 the earthquake may have destroyed and evacuated a grandiose Canaanite site that had flourished some 3,700 years ago.

The group made the discovery at the 75-acre site of Tell Kabri in Israel, which contains the ruins of a palace and a Canaanite city dating from about 1900-1700 BC. It is run by Assaf Yusur Landau, Professor of Mediterranean Archeology at the University of Haifa, and Eric Klein, Professor of Classics and Anthropology at George Washington University.

“For several years we have been wondering about the reason for the sudden destruction of the palace and the site and their abandonment after centuries of prosperous occupation,” said Yasur Landau. “Several seasons ago, we began to uncover a trench running through part of the palace, but initial indications are that it was recent, and it may have been dug within the past few decades, a century or two at most. But then, in 2019, we opened a new area. We found that the trench lasted for at least 30 meters, with an entire part of the wall falling into it in ancient times, and other walls and floors facing it from both sides.

According to Michael Lazar, the study’s lead author, learning about past earthquakes can be extremely challenging in the archaeological record, especially in locations where there is not much stone building work and where degradable building materials such as bricks and sun-dried mud. -Dub was used instead. However, at Tell Kabir, the team found stone foundations for the lower part of the walls and mud-brick superstructures at the top.

“Our studies show the importance of combining large and small archeology methods to identify ancient earthquakes,” he said. “We also needed to evaluate alternative scenarios, including climate, environmental and economic collapse, as well as war, before we could be confident in proposing a seismic event scenario.”

Researchers were able to see areas where the plaster floors appeared crooked, the walls were tilted or dislodged, the mud bricks from the walls and ceilings had collapsed into the rooms, and in some cases quickly buried dozens of large jars.

“It really looks like the earth has simply opened up and everything has fallen off its sides,” Klein said. “It is unlikely that the destruction was the result of violent human activity because there are no visible traces of fire, no weapons such as arrows indicating a battle, nor any un-buried corpses associated with the fighting. We can also see some unexpected things in other rooms of the palace, including In that in and around the wine cellar we dug a few years ago. “

In 2013, the team discovered 40 jars inside a single storage room in the palace during an expedition also backed by a grant from the National Geographic Society. The analysis of organic residues carried out on the jars indicated that they contained wine; It was described at the time as the oldest and largest wine cellar discovered in the Near East to date. Since then, the team has found four more storage rooms and at least 70 more jars, all buried by the building’s collapse.

Ruth Shack Gross, a professor of geological archeology at the University of Haifa and a co-author of the study, said, “The sediments of the floor indicate a rapid collapse rather than a slow accumulation of decaying mud bricks from existing walls or the roofs of an abandoned building,” he said. “The rapid collapse and rapid burial, in addition to the geological condition of Tell Kabir, raise the possibility of one or more earthquakes that destroyed the walls and roof of the palace without setting it on fire.”

Investigators hope that their methodological approach can be applied to other archaeological sites, where it can serve to test or reinforce cases of potential damage and damage due to an earthquake.

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Roy Nickelsberg, a graduate student at the University of Haifa, also contributed to the research and final study.

The results are published today in the journal PLOS ONE. The National Geographic Society, the Israel Science Foundation, Haifa University, and Haifa University funded the research.

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