Faulted Debris Flow Earthquake Open site page in a new tab

Archaeological and structural evidence from the Berniki Theater and the South Gate area at Tiberias indicates significant earthquake damage that occurred sometime between the 7th and 10th centuries CE, probably during one of the 749 CE Sabbatical Year Earthquakes. Ferrario et al. (2020) identify a terminus ante quem of “not later than the 8th–11th century CE” for the damaging event at the theater. This constraint is based on structures of the Fatimid Abbasid quarter that were built directly on top of the theater and the debris-flow deposits that buried it. These later buildings followed a plan similar to the underlying theater. The overlying Fatimid–Abbasid structures were removed during excavation to expose the Roman theater. Photographs taken prior to their removal show that these later structures exhibited no visible faulting, damage, or deformation. According to Ferrario et al. (2020), the earthquake damage was “limited to the Roman-age flooring and to the debris flow sediments above it." An earlier chronological constraint comes from the South Gate area of Tiberias, where a deformed Byzantine wall and the collapse of a vaulted structure were observed. The wall belongs to the city fortifications attributed to the reign of Justinian I, who ruled from 527–565 CE. Procopius (c. 500-565 CE) reports in Book V, Chapter IX of On the Buildings of Justinian that Justinian constructed “the wall of Tiberias,” and a marginal note in the translation of the text dates this work to about 550 CE. The collapsed vault associated with the deformation was dated to the Umayyad period by Hartal et al. (2010), while structures constructed above the collapse were assigned to the Abbasid period. Taken together, these observations constrain the archaeoseismic damage at the Berniki Theater and the South Gate sector to an interval between the 7th and 10th centuries CE. No radiocarbon dates were obtained from the debris-flow deposits covering the theater, and although a trench was opened near the South Gate, it could not be deepened below levels of the 11th century CE because human remains were encountered.

By Jefferson Williams