Event CH3-E1 - Modeled Age 662-757 CE
At the
deltaic site of Bet Zeyda (aka Beteiha), just north of the
Sea of Galilee (aka Lake Kinneret),
three-dimensional paleoseismic investigations
were conducted by multiple researchers over a number
of years using numerous trenches. The studies
examined a series of ~E–W-oriented
paleo-channels intersected and
sinistrally displaced by the ~N–S-trending
active Jordan Gorge Fault, producing a detailed
chronology of fault activity over roughly the past
2,000 years, based on
radiocarbon dating of
detrital charcoal. Once outliers are
excluded, this material appears to have a
residence time of decades rather than
centuries (e.g. see
Marco et al., 2005:200). Results indicate that
seismic events were more frequent and produced
greater fault slip during the first millennium CE
than in the second, suggesting the region may be
approaching another period of heightened seismic
activity.
Wechsler et al. (2014:9) report that Event CH3-E1 was identified and
dated on both walls of fault-perpendicular Trench T45 as “an upward
truncation of
fault strands.” Within the
fault zone along a
secondary fissure, they documented “a large fissure
that contains rotated blocks of coherent stratigraphy floating inside
more massive
fissure-fill material (between 14 and 15 m).” Additional
observations of this event led them to conclude there was strong evidence
for a
surface-rupturing event. They further speculated
that the event “produced uplift of the central block within
the fault zone.”
Wechsler et al. (2018:214) revised the date of CH3-E1
originally reported in
Wechsler et al. (2014), suggesting that “the event age
is younger than previously inferred.” They observed that this revised age
overlapped with CH2-E1, suggesting that CH2-E1 and CH3-E1 could represent the
same event. In Table 3,
Wechsler et al. (2018) date CH3-E1 to 662–757 CE using
a
Bayesian model of radiocarbon ages, and characterize the
associated offset as small. It should be noted that they measured
1.3 m of left-lateral offset for event CH2-E1.
